Yesterday, Reverend O'Connell, what did he say, turned sixty years old. Sixty years. So forty and sixty. Congratulations. You've reached the unstable age of sixty. Has someone turned 59? Yes. Or is it Dr. Chu? My boss. I'm not supposed to tell you that. We say when all dharmas, when all phenomenal events are buddha dharmas, there is delusion, enlightenment, practice,

[01:25]

birth, death, Buddhas and sentient beings. And one way to understand this is that when all phenomenal, at the time that all phenomenal events are considered to be objects of study, in the Buddha Dharma, when we have something to study, when whatever is happening we look at it as what is it? What is it that thus comes? What is it that thus comes? When everything that you experience is What is it that thus comes?

[02:30]

How does the Buddha Dharma come to be now? When everything's like that for you, then there is delusion, enlightenment, practice, birth and death, Buddhas and sentient beings. If moment after moment it's like that, everything you meet, what is it that thus comes? Everything you meet, what is it that thus comes? Everything you look and observe in that way, everything you study, everything you learn about, You learn about everything. When we live in that moment, then the time comes when we reach the end of our study.

[03:40]

When we study, we learn to study what comes thoroughly. We learn to ask and look at what happens thoroughly. We come to the end of our study, and at the end of our study we have nothing more to study. At the end of our study we can't find anything. At that time we find that what we've been studying cannot be found. We find that what we've been studying has no abiding self. Sometimes at that point people laugh or cry, but you don't have to.

[04:44]

At that time there is no birth and death. There is no delusion or enlightenment. As the Heart Sutra says, when you study form deeply, when every form is a Buddha form, when every form is what is it that thus comes, you come to the place where you find the emptiness or the selflessness of form. So we have both form and the selflessness of form, both feeling and the selflessness of feeling, both delusion and the selflessness of delusion.

[06:12]

And they live very happily together. We don't favor one over the other. in the Buddha way, we honor every event as meeting the Buddha. We don't like war. I don't like war. I don't like cruelty. I don't like violence. But if the event of violence appears, I want to practice what is it that thus comes. Someone told me actually just recently, one of our comrades, that a person came into her house with a gun recently and the first thing that came to her mind was, what is it that thus comes?

[07:27]

and somehow she and the gun carrier got through that crisis together peacefully without harming each other. So I recommend to myself and to you that we get into the practice of meeting every event every person, every animal, every plant, every rock, no matter how peaceful or violent the meeting is, even a peaceful meeting, don't miss the chance to learn about what it is. How can I learn what is it that thus comes? And then when suddenly something very intense and challenging comes, maybe we can again... What is it that thus comes?

[08:49]

Someone who really disagrees with us, who doesn't respect us, or even someone we don't respect, appears suddenly oh yeah, this is one of the people I don't respect. Okay, what is it that thus comes? We don't answer the question. We continue to ask the question to the end of the questioning. And at the end of the questioning we can't find the thing which we're meeting. We can meet it we can realize peace with it, but we can't find it. But we don't favor not finding it over finding it. We don't favor its appearance over its lack of independent self.

[09:56]

We have both. And then the next step is The Buddha way is basically leaping. That's basically what it is. It's leaping beyond the nominal appearances, which we question, and their emptiness, which we realize. It's leaping beyond all phenomenal things and all emptinesses. And then there is delusion and enlightenment, birth, death, Buddhas and Sangebis.

[10:57]

We didn't mess with the world. We didn't make things empty. We didn't make things apparent. We just studied to the end, realized that things don't have self, and then leapt beyond abundance and lack. And then we can enjoy what? delusion. Now we see what delusion has always been. We see delusion is the manifestation of the realized universe. On the occasion of meeting birth, we see birth is the manifestation of the realized universe of birth.

[12:09]

We see birth is the manifestation of the ultimate reality of birth. On the occasion of meeting death, it's not a matter of faith anymore. We can see, we realize that death is the manifestation of the whole works Death is the manifestation of the whole works. Death is the manifestation, is the realized universe. Each of our deaths, each of our births is like that. We proceed towards this realization by meeting each thing by learning to meet each thing in the mode of learning about each thing. Terrible things, we meet them and learn about them.

[13:15]

Beautiful things, we meet them and learn about them. Even emptiness, we still study emptiness once we realize that we continue to study emptiness. Even when we find that things don't have an abiding self, we still wonder, what is it that thus comes when no abiding self appears? The study goes on and on. And the deeper it goes, the deeper it goes. And one Zen teacher said something like, well, what's the difference between enlightenment and delusion?

[14:33]

No. So he said something like, when there's delusion, it's, I don't know what, I forgot, something like, a bowl of rice and three bowls of soup. And when it's enlightenment, it's a bowl of rice and three bowls of soup. And then he says, what's the difference? The difference is Flowers fall when you attach to them, weeds grow when you don't like them. Right now it seems like, to me,

[15:43]

that attaching to flowers and not liking weeds is forgetting the time when all dharmas are buddha dharmas. It's forgetting to ask the question, what is it that thus comes? It's forgetting to give close attention to every action. Flowers come. Please pay close attention to every action. What is it that thus comes?

[16:45]

What is the flower? And even more important than asking what the flower is, even more important than asking what that is, is what action is arising? What is the intention here? And the intention might be to ask the question, But it could be some other intention. Whatever it is, that's the best one to look at, the one that's happening now. In Zen culture, as you know, sometimes students and teachers look at stories, sometimes old stories, like stories of old Zen teachers or old Indian disciples of the Buddha.

[18:14]

They look at stories and they ask, what is it that thus comes in this story? And they look at the story together until they realize that there's no abiding self in the story. But also we can look at the story of the present moment, the story of your present activity, We can study the present manifestation of the selflessness of phenomena, the current action. During this session, we've been emphasizing looking at the present, studying the present manifestation, the now manifestation of the fundamental point.

[19:29]

Any feedback on this? Any care to express? Yes? I was just wondering, I read before that wind and the spreading of the earth was... You read what? I read that wind... Wind? Wind, and it said that it was longer and the color green, and working with... You read that wind is associated with karma and intention. Wind is a symbol of intention. Okay. Did I know when I recited the poem about the breeze at dawn has a secret to tell you?

[21:04]

Did I know about the Tibetans saying that intention was, I mean, wind was a metaphor for intention? Did I know that? Is that what you're asking? Okay. Not that I know of. But I am influenced by all you, so... I'm influenced by all of you, yes? All of you. Pardon? Are you influenced by the raising hand? I am influenced by the raising hand. I'm also influenced by the lowering of the hand, and the laughing face, and the hmmm. I'm rather impressionable. In the scripture, it was just said earlier that

[22:07]

Yes, yes. yes I'll comment and yes that's right, or yes that's right and yes I'll comment. Now some, I guess, if there might be somebody who just is kind of set up to see emptiness first of all and then see appearances afterwards, that person, you know, might be different. But most people, when they see a phenomena, they see, you know, for a moment anyway, they see sort of a kind of appearance of the phenomenon. They see kind of a... As Karen was saying yesterday, they see the phenomenon with a little bubble over it. And if you... So, and also, in other words, Another way to say that would be that when we first look at something, it's hard for us to, at the first moment of looking at it, it's hard to be in a state where you instantly penetrate it.

[23:57]

But if you were in the mode of looking really thoroughly at one thing, that at first you couldn't look at thoroughly but then you really penetrated it it's possible that in the next moment the next thing that appeared you would be in a mode of thorough looking of not half-hearted looking and you would wholeheartedly look at the next event from the beginning of your meeting with it you'd wholeheartedly meet it and that you would instantly see its emptiness almost simultaneous with its form. But the key thing here in practice is wholeheartedness. If we look at things half-heartedly, we find their surface. If we look at them wholeheartedly, we don't find it anymore.

[25:07]

Like Dogen says, well, like Dogen says, when you practice intimately and return to where you are, when you practice intimately and return to your experience of anything, you will realize, it will be clear that there's no abiding self and you won't be able to find the experience. When you look closely at all your activities, then it will be clear that you can't find anything. Or another way to say it is, when you fully engage body and mind, when you see forms and hear sounds, fully engaging body and mind, you meet things directly.

[26:11]

Not like an image and its reflection in a mirror. Not like the moon and its reflection in the water. When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. Wholehearted engagement, when that's turned on, you can't find the other side. When the other side is turned on, you can't find the engagement. There's just the moon, or just the reflection, or just the thing. Yes? Save the body which is the fruit of many lives.

[27:34]

Did you have something you want to say about that besides that it read? I guess there are two things that come to me. One is take care of this precious body because this is the body. that will become Buddha, that will contribute to the realization of Buddha. This is the precious dharma-receiving body, so take good care of it. Another one would be, liberate this body after you've liberated everybody else. save it after you've saved everyone. That's another possible way of understanding. I brought this teabowl and this setsu or this cleaning implement to do a little demonstration of a bowl washing demonstration.

[28:59]

And I'm not doing this primarily so that you will learn to wash the bowl in some particular way. I'm doing it as a demonstration of meditating on action, on intention. So there's various ways of pouring the water which you have received in the first bowl into the second bowl. Are you familiar with the situation of having three bowls before you? And this represents the first bowl, the largest of the three. And so then sometimes someone will come to you and pour water in here. And you can use, you can place, there's two ways that I've seen in Soto Zen.

[30:02]

One way is to place the bowl down on top of your, on the meal board and clean it on the meal board. And the other is to place it on your thigh. Okay. But in either case, the point is to set it, kind of firmly plant it to clean it, either here or on the ground. Some people say to do it on the meal board to protect the okesa. So if you're a priest and you have an okesa, some people feel it's good to put the bowl down so we don't spill water on the okesa. But other people, and I'm one of them, clean the bowl on the thigh. After cleaning the bowl, then we usually pour this water, this cleaning water, into the next bowl. And the way I do it is I take my two thumbs and I place them like this.

[31:03]

I actually have them touching each other like this. Can you see? Actually, I don't always do it this way, but this looks really nice at the moment. I wish you could see how cute it looks. Can you see? Isn't that nice? They're sort of in the contour of the bowl. That could be a nice picture for a Zen poster. Linda Ruth does an additional little thing of curling these two fingers back like this, which looks nice too, doesn't it? And she has one thumb slightly above the other one, like that. But I think the way I do it is prettier. And she has little thumbs in me too. There's actually room for both of my thumbs to be right next to each other on there.

[32:08]

See? Isn't that nice? So one can sit here and look at this for a long time and enjoy this or just do it frequently. And I've been doing this for quite a while. For about, yeah, almost 40 years I've been doing this. So you can go like... But basically, and I check with Linda Ruth, and I check with Maya, and they do pretty much this way too. But I've noticed some people doing other ways. And that's, you know, that's okay. I'm just showing it this way. And you tilt it this way, you pour the water in a sense towards you into the bowl. We don't usually... We have also a tradition in Soto Zen of not pouring the water away from us. And this is a transmitted thing from Dogen Zenji who, out of respect for the water, he felt it was more intimate, I guess, and respectful to pour the water towards him.

[33:10]

Even pouring water into a river, if you come to pour water into a river, pour it towards you, not like this, but like this. That's a transmission. It's not better than other way. It's just a transmission. So after you finish cleaning, then like this and pour it into the second bowl, which is on the ground. Because you can't hold it up because you've got both hands on this thing. Then you clean the second bowl, and the second bowl, then you clean the second bowl, then you pick the second bowl up and put the third bowl in the middle, and you pick the second bowl up and pretty much do the same thing, although it's smaller bowls, a little harder, especially to do this part, but you can do it. So, like this, or like this. But anyway, you're holding the things actually in there like that when you do it in the second bowl.

[34:16]

And then set it down, and then clean the third bowl. And then after that, we usually dry this. And the way we do it usually is place it vertically and squeeze. place it in the water and lift it up and squeeze, place it in the water and lift it up and squeeze. Is that the way most people do it? Three times? Do it three times? Some people do it more because they have filthy things. And some people, some very nice people, are really concerned when it's getting dry and they go... But it's not usually that vigorous. And also, we sometimes make offerings on the board here.

[35:18]

We don't do it during the Sesshin, but at Tassajara and I think City Center, too, sometimes they put offerings on the tip of the board to the spirits. Rice, usually from whatever's in the first bowl, they put out here and then they collect these offerings. So if you make offerings, then you can put the water and bring the water up on the shaft and wash it that way. Wash the sticky stuff off like that and then squeeze. And then we place the tip in the drying cloth, squeeze it, turn it, and then slip it through. And you can clean the shaft and then slip it in the You also have already washed your setsu and spoon in the second bowl. We usually wash it in the second bowl. And then pour that into the third bowl. I'm telling you this for information, but most important, I'm telling you as an opportunity, the main thing here

[36:24]

for me, is that you pay close attention to your action in this process. Pay attention to your action means you pay attention to the physical movement, but inside of the movement there is an intention. Pay attention to each intention while you're washing. while you're in the process of this ritual, every moment is an opportunity to give close attention to the intention, to your motivation in doing this ritual. This is a ritual to learn about yourself, to learn about your intention. What are you intending to do What are you intending, I should say, each moment? There is an intention.

[37:27]

What is it? I'm not saying what intention you should have. I'm not saying what intention you should have. I'm not saying you should have intention to do this well, to do this better than other people, to do this right, to do this wrong, to get the bowls cleaned. I'm not saying what the intention is. I'm saying please realize, understand that this whole setup is for the purpose of giving close attention to your intention. There is an intention there. If it's not observed, that's a great pity. If it is observed, it is the working of the Buddha Dharma. The Buddha teaches to pay close attention, to give close attention to every action and thereby realize there's no abiding self in the ritual, in the bowls, in the food, in the practitioner, in the Buddha.

[38:40]

But it takes training to watch each moment. meal after meal, moment after moment, the intention, the intention. What is it that does comes? The intention. What is it? The more we watch it, the more it evolves. The more it evolves, the more our understanding develops. The more our understanding develops, the more we penetrate and see more clearly what the intention is. The more clearly we see our intention, the more positively it evolves. The more positively it evolves, the clearer our understanding. The clearer our understanding, the more the intention evolves. So our understanding and our intention are not the same. But by turning our understanding, our awareness to the intention, they both evolve. And we gradually see that all beings are drawn into this intention.

[39:46]

And as this intention is refined, all beings are drawn into the refinement. And if they're not, we haven't yet penetrated the attention. We have not yet given enough attention to it. Full attention is the attention that includes other beings, including that when other beings observe us or even feel us doing our meditation on what we're doing, they somehow want to join us, even though they don't know what it is that they want to join. but somehow they sense our awareness that they are supporting our intention. And when I make this little demonstration, I watch, is there in my intention some gaining idea to get you to hold your bowl the way I showed you

[40:57]

Is there any intention to encourage Linda Ruth to move her little fingers differently? Is there an intention for me to conform to her way? We can see all that. And these are not terribly unwholesome considerations, but to me, again, this is kind of far out, but I'm saying to you, Doing good is good, yes, relatively good. Being skillful is good. But being skillful without attention to it is not as good as being unskillful with intention. It's the presence of intention that saves the world. Just good action by itself will not save this world. The good thing about good action is that it generally needs attention, needs study, otherwise it will slip away.

[42:02]

But once you do good intention with good intention with attention for a while, it can become a habit and you can do things skillfully without attention. In other words, you can do things skillfully without saying, what is it that thus comes? But to me, it's more important to say what is it that thus comes than whether you do good or unskillful things. If you bring that question to unskillful things, they will change tracks and become skillful. If you don't do it, the skillful things, they will degenerate. But again, the degeneration is not the main point. The main point is the ignorance which comes with not paying attention and the suffering that comes with that. So this is just one example of an occasion to study. Every step

[43:10]

is another occasion. Every step there is an intention there. Maybe I won't say every step there is intention, but in every step where there is consciousness at the same time there is an intention in that consciousness. Yes and yes. Actually, you can study inwardly and outwardly. You can study other people's intentions too. And you study other people's like you study your own. You just observe them. But usually, most people cannot clearly study other people's until they study their own a long time. But after you study your own, particularly when you can see... First you start by looking at... Intention is always cognitive, but intention can also be physical.

[44:20]

So verbal activity is physical, but if it's cognitive, it's karmic. So if there's cognition accompanying a physical action, then it has an intention. If you learn to see your intention in your physical actions, like this example here, of pouring water from the first bowl to the second bowl, of putting your thumbs in a certain position, or not, if you can see the intention there, you can learn to see other people's intention when they pour the bowl. So when I'm sitting here, I'm watching all of your intentions while you're pouring the water. I can see them, and I'm keeping track. Yes? Yeah, when you first start, you might say, my own intention.

[45:25]

That's the chunky part. I say, when you first look at the intention, it's kind of chunky, like it's mine. My intention, my thumbs on my bowl and my setzu, or maybe I borrowed the setzu, but anyway, I'm thinking of things in terms of like, with bubbles around them. There's a bubble around it. If you study the intention, you'll realize that it's actually a pattern. The intention is really a pattern. Like, for example, it's something right now, but the right now is nothing more than a link between past and future. The present is really, you can't actually grasp the present mind. But at first you think, there's the present mind, I got it, and it's mine. And in that present moment, which I have now, there's an intention that's my intention. That's the way most people will find it. If I say, find an intention, and I'm saying, you mean mine? And I don't say which one to do. You say, well, where do I look? Okay, find yours.

[46:26]

That's kind of chunky, kind of gross intention. The intention really isn't an isolated, independent thing. It's a relationship. But since it's a relationship, there's no place to get a hold of it, including the one who's studying can't be separate from it either. The me and the my intention actually at first seem to be separate and like one can know the other, but it's not so. At first it seems that way. As you look more deeply, you find out it's not so. You find out it's a relationship and no part of it can be grasped But it doesn't mean it's not there, it just means the relationship is how it comes to be. And that's the way, if you practice intimately with this intention, whatever you call it, and return to this intention, you will be clear that nothing, that you, it's not to say there's no you, or no intention, it's just that you and neither you nor your intention nor the consequences

[47:30]

nor any part of the pattern, nor the pattern itself have an abiding, graspable self. That's the result of thoroughly studying intention. Okay? Yeah, well, that's part of what the intention is, is it's a pattern where there seems like somebody is intending. And then if you look more at the intention, you'll see actually it's a pattern. And you'll notice that the thing you thought that was outside the pattern is in the pattern. And then you'll start to see that there's no actual fixed independent points, that they're all interdependent. It will be clear. eventually, that there's no bubble over any of this stuff. And then the bubble pops, and then the next moment arrives, maybe with bubbles again.

[48:35]

And if you study that, they will pop too. Yes and yes. What? You said, you just said intentionality informs all of our action? Right. And I like the expression intentionality informs. Yes? He said it was going to be short.

[49:37]

Want to stop now? OK. You said that intention seems to make you think of a willful mind. Did you say that? A rational, willful mind. Again, that's redundant. Yes, it's redundant, but it's also, you're right, intention is the same thing as the willful mind. But it's not really, yeah, it's the part of the mind which is willful. So cognition, basic cognition, is not willful. basic knowing is not willful. However, basic knowing arises with a willful mind or with intention. So willful mind and intention are basically synonymous. Will, willful mind, intention, intentional mind. Intentional minds arise with basic cognition. Basic cognition arises interdependently will or intention or willful minds arise interdependently with cognition.

[50:47]

And rationality, if there's rationality in this pattern, if there's a rationale in the pattern of the consciousness, then the will will be rational. But usually that's the case. Usually there's some rational structure to a moment of cognition. The rational structure is at that moment a characteristic of this will. The will is the structure, is the structure of the pattern of relationship of the moment. Okay? And one more thing about that is it is possible that you could also see that there's an irrational structure to a moment of consciousness. That's also possible. Then your question is, how does that relate to spontaneity? I could say that, yeah, that it seems to be on there.

[51:56]

Well, like, yeah. Those who study intentional action will realize spontaneity. Those who study intentional action, which is redundant again, intentional action is redundant. Those who study action, those who give close attention to action, will realize spontaneity. Those who do not, those who do not study intention, they will not realize spontaneity. Spontaneity is there, but they won't realize it because they are ignoring what they're doing. if you ignore what you do then the consequences of what you do in a state of ignorance is to make you feel unspontaneous. In other words, you miss out on how you're working in creative ways. So it may be part of Zen rhetoric and Zen public relations is to mention what it's like when you understand.

[53:01]

You know, to show examples of people who have studied intention for many years and thoroughly penetrated intention and then they see that intention has no inherent nature or self and then they see how the intention comes to be and how the intention comes to be is in a sense spontaneous but it's spontaneous in the sense that all the conditions are coming together in this concert to create the current intention or the current activity. So it's through study of intention that you become free of the bondage which results from unstudied intention. Unstudied intention leads to bondage and suffering. Studied intention leads to resolution

[54:02]

of this bondage and suffering and a realization of how everything including intention is a spontaneous but spontaneous doesn't mean without cause it means just caused just caused in this case only caused nobody outside trying to control the situation spontaneous combustion is like nobody lit the fire right just causes and conditions. There was no agent outside the activity. Of course there's conditions for this combustion but it was no like arsonist, no lighter of the fire. There was just the activity without a separate actor. In that sense we are already spontaneous but we miss it. And we miss it because we're distracted from looking at what we're doing. Or like Dogen says, if you don't settle down and give up discursive thought, you may miss the body which is already spontaneously leaping on the path of liberation.

[55:21]

The body's already leaping. That is your actual body. It's a leaping body all day long. But if you're looking someplace else, you might miss the leaping body. which is spontaneously jumping around, which is the puppet of the universe, but also it's the basis of the universe. The universe makes you and you make the universe. You're short but I was long. There's never action without cognition and there's never cognition without action.

[56:23]

But there can be action without attention to action. So every cognition This is kind of like a hard-line Buddhist psychological or epistemological statement, is that every cognition comes with a pattern of relationship. The basic cognition is just the awareness of the presence of something, like the awareness of the presence of blue, of the experience of blue. That's the basic cognition. There's no intention regarding it in that. but there's an intention which arises with that, which is the pattern of all the other factors of the universe, and particularly up front, the patterns in consciousness that arise with the cognition. And that, of course, all cognitions have some consequence, but the cognition itself, this is a big point, and I welcome you to consider this with me over time, but at this point,

[57:34]

over here where I'm sitting, it looks like cognition itself doesn't really have an evolutionary force, the basic cognition. It's the pattern of relationship that arises with it called the intention that has evolutionary force. Cognitions have consequence and one of the consequences is another cognition. But you can see blue over and over, just know that it's there, know that it's there, know that it's there, and that will not cause any evolution. But to have a certain intention towards the blue, those have evolutionary consequences. So cognitions have consequence, but intentions have moral or evolutionary consequence. Of course it's good to study cognition itself. That's epistemology. But we also need to be psychological and study action, psychic and physical action.

[58:41]

Because it's in the action department that we evolve. And many people do not look at their intention much. Therefore, they're missing tuning in to the evolutionary channel. You call it the discovery channel? This is the evolutionary channel. And actually, you know, discovery channel, I think, is not that bad when it comes to evolutionary. There's some evolutionary stuff in there, actually. But we have our home evolutionary channel. It's always turned on. But people sometimes don't pay attention to it. So attention to the evolutionary channel is attention to intentions. We're also aware of cognition, but that doesn't cause evolution because simultaneously with all cognitions is, according to most schools of Buddhist psychology, there is awareness of whatever cognition you have, there is an awareness that you're having the cognition. However, that awareness is there for the lowest level of cognition and the highest level of cognition.

[59:48]

So you can be aware of a low cognition, a low level diluted cognition over and over and over with no evolutionary impact. In fact, you are aware of your lowest, most undeveloped cognitions you've ever had. You were aware of them at the time. But that didn't cause the evolution. But when you start looking at your intention, that tunes into the evolutionary dimension and the attention to it causes the evolution to move towards awakening. That's what I'm saying. That's the attention to will. The intention to karma is not always there. For some people it's seldom there. For some people it's often there. And for highly trained people it's there really a lot. They learn to be mindful of intention moment by moment. And a Buddha is somebody who always sees the intention.

[60:49]

always tuned in to the intention. Now the intention of Buddha is always to be concerned, always intending. It's always in the pattern of concern for beings and wanting beings to do the same. They're always in that channel, that same intention basically. But again, don't worry if your intention is not that swell. The important thing is pay attention to it. give close, careful attention to it. Return and practice intimately with it. Then you're on the evolutionary mainstream of consciousness. Does that make sense? Yes? Two parts to your question.

[61:51]

One is, what's the relationship between vow and intention? Vows and intentions are basically the same. It's just that a vow is an intention. So people have certain vows, like I vow to live for the welfare of all beings. That could be a vow. But at the time you say that, that's actually your intention at that moment, maybe. That might really be your intention. If you look inside, you might see, oh, I actually want to live for the welfare of all beings. That actually is my intention right now. Then you might also say it out loud, and it's possible that you'd say it out loud right at the same time as a whole group of people are saying it, by coincidence, that you'd say, sentient beings are number-fullest, I vow to save them. And you look inside and you say, that actually is what I vow. Might be at that moment. Or you might say, I vowed to save them, you look inside and say, well, no, I actually don't. I actually only vowed to save like six of them. You actually check inside.

[62:54]

Saying to make the verbal utterance, I vowed to save all beings, sounds like pretty good karma to me. But that's not, the saying is not the karma, the karma is what the intention inside saying it is. The words, I vowed to be helpful, those are nice sounding words, That's not the karma, though. The karma is the intention that's woven into there. So when you say, literally in a few minutes, when you say that thing, see if you can look while you're talking and see what the actual intention is there. And maybe when you look, the intention will be in accord with the words you say. Maybe it won't. But if it's not and you look, it will become in accord. That's my prediction. That if we look, while we're chanting the bodhisattva vows, if we look at the actual intention in the moment, even if it's not in accord with that, by continuous attention to this situation, the actual present intention will become the bodhisattva vow.

[64:01]

So when I ask people, what are you up to? What's your intention? What's your vow? Even if they say, well, my vow is actually to be a famous Zen master, or my vow is to take over Zen Center, or my vow is just to be just to get a little break from my suffering. I don't really care about other people. Whatever they say, or my vow is to be a great piano player, somebody told me. My vow is whatever. Whatever it is, if they pay attention to it, it will become eventually the same vow as all those who have studied their vows in the past. Basically, they come up with the same vow. Of course, there's like Dogen's vow we chanted at the beginning here. His is a certain shape, a little bit different. Basically, it's the same vow as all bodhisattvas. But your way of saying it might be a little bit different because of where you are, what city you live in. Like if you're in Lebanon or Baghdad, you might have a slightly different vow than you have in San Francisco or Moscow.

[65:04]

or twenty-five hundred years ago. So there's some variation in the expression, but really the essential vow will become the same in all those who study it for a long time. Your next question was? No, no. Oh, yeah. So there is a... I think that the majority of Buddhist teachings about intention is that intention is not material. Intention is not material. It is a cognitive thing and cognitive things are not material. Intention is cognitive. However, the cognitive thing actually arises in dependence on the interaction between the subtle living materiality of our bodies and the gross materiality of the world.

[66:09]

That interaction gives rise to cognition, which is not material. Then the intention which comes with the cognition is not material. But there are some teachings which say that there is a material consequence of intentions. of good intentions and unwholesome intentions. There's a material consequence, some schools say. It's not a material consciousness which can be cognized easily. It's material, but you can't see it with your eyes or hear it with your ears. So the material consequence is called abhijñapti-bhrupa. But the karma itself is not, I don't know what to call it, the intention, the karma, is not physical. But intention can infuse physical action. The posture, you know, again, I raise my hand, but the karma part of it, the evolutionary part, is the intention in the raising of it.

[67:12]

because this same motion could have different intentions and different evolutionary consequence. And part of the consequence is a material phenomena called abhijanapti-rupa, which has an influence on your future cognitions. So if you do a ceremony where you actually say vows and sit in certain postures while you do it, the intentions that are woven into those physical and vocal actions, they have physical consequence which influence later intentions, which is part of the reason for doing the ceremony. is that the ceremony causes a transformation of your consciousness, which then has this nice influence. So those are those big vows you take in special ritual situations. They have a big impact, which some people want. but the impact is not directly the same.

[68:20]

That impact does not totally determine the future intentions. That's why you do the ceremony, but that doesn't mean every time, every moment following the ceremony, your intention is going to be the same as the vow. But still the vow creates a kind of container in which to support you looking at what your intention is and to check to see if it accords with the vow. Does that make sense? That's the idea of a physical, it makes it like a little temple in your mind which you're kind of like sometimes embarrassed to be living in because the actual intention that's going on in the temple isn't in accord with the policies of the temple. But you're living in the temple so you notice it. You know, oh my God, how did that intention get in here? But if you hadn't built the temple by doing the ceremony, you'd say, so what, man, that's whatever, you know, fine. But to be in the temple and be, you know, eating meat or something, kind of like, ooh, that's kind of a problem. I got a problem. There's a problem here.

[69:22]

I made these vows, and now people are telling lies and misusing sexuality. It doesn't work so well in the temple that was built by this ceremony. So you can actually build these spaces in your consciousness in which they don't completely control your future intentions but they support you looking at them and if the intentions don't accord with the vow you feel like, yikes this doesn't go with that big vow back there so the vow is helpful to embarrass you when you're not in alignment with it and it also supports you to look to see if you are in line but even some people who take vows don't, still don't check out whether they're in accord with them sometimes But when they don't, it's embarrassing, so then they're kind of, okay, I guess I should look to see if I'm following my precepts that I said I would practice. That's the physical, one physical effect. Again, saying you're going to practice the precept doesn't mean you will, but it has the effect of making you less comfortable than you used to be if you don't.

[70:27]

I would say generally. Sometimes it takes a while to take effect. You know, like sometimes you... You promise to practice precepts and then you happily for years you don't practice them and then suddenly after about many years you suddenly go, wow, oh no. Finally the effect comes. Some people it comes right the day after the ceremony. They suddenly become really upset about noticing how bad their intentions is vis-a-vis the ceremony yesterday. But some people it takes a while before they notice, oh maybe those precepts have something to do with what I'm doing now. We don't know exactly when the karma will mature. But it will. It will land. So, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[71:30]

Great. Great. Yeah, put the question on that too. Turn the question around on that. So you're asking the question and you've got this good-bad thing around. Turn the question back on that. Bring those things up away from your shoulder actually away from your ear, bring them away from your ear and put them in front and make them be a Zen master sitting in front of you who's saying, that's good, that's bad. That's good, that's bad. Make it a Zen master. Make the sixth ancestor who's sitting there saying, where are you from? I'm from San Francisco. That's bad. And then, what is it that thus comes? Ask that question. or have a Zen master in front of you, every time you hear that's bad, have them ask you, what is it that thus comes?

[72:35]

Apply that to the comments that follow right after you ask the question. Because the comments that ask the question are the next thing to apply the question to. So something happens, you ask the question, a comment comes, now that's the next thing to ask the question about. There's an intention in, that's bad. And it may be a wonderful intention. which if you would look at it for a moment like, what is it? You might say, oh, it sounds like a judgment, but actually there's this other thing in there. So get faster at applying the thing so that the wisecrack right after you ask the question is very fast too, but then come back with the question again. You know, it's hard to learn that, but that's the idea, I think. And like I said, the Buddha learns, is able to do this all day long. And I remember Hakuin Zenji said that when he was about 65, he was able to be mindful non-stop throughout the day.

[73:41]

Every moment, like, what's happening? What am I up to? What am I up to? What am I up to? And maybe for him, usually it was pretty good what he's up to, but that's not the main thing. The main thing is that you're looking, that you're enjoying the evolutionary channel. Is that enough for your day? It's kind of late, right? It feels like about 12. No, it's only 11.30. That seems pretty long, right? Is it okay to stop? No? You don't want to say yes? Rosemary? Yeah. That's good. That's good. That's good. Yes? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

[74:44]

I didn't say it was passive. I just said it's not what we mean by intention. Intention arises with it, but what basic cognition means is just the awareness of the presence of something. It isn't the intention in relationship to it. It isn't the pattern. It's just the basic knowing. It's the basic context. So actually, yeah, I'll stop there. And you can say it's passive if you want to, but I would say better than passive, I would say receptive. Receptive rather than passive. It's receiving the causes and conditions which give rise to consciousness. It is receiving the conditions which give rise to consciousness is consciousness. receiving the conditions which make rosemary is rosemary. That's what rosemary is.

[75:55]

She's basically the reception of the rosemary conditions. She's nothing more than that. But the rosemary that's received is a rosemary that has activity or karma. But your activity is not the basic reception. No. It's just fleetingly, momentarily, very fragilely, just conditions come together and then it comes into being. But it's just there for a flash. Because the whole universe is changing around it and comes together to make it. Miraculously consciousness has been created at a point in the universe just for a moment and then it flashes away. But because there was consciousness it becomes a condition now for another moment of consciousness to arise and another one can arise and each one comes with intention or activity

[77:03]

all consciousnesses have activity, but the activity of them is not the same as them. Inseparable, but different dimensions of the process. Does that make sense now? Difficult to imagine, yeah. Yeah. I think it is difficult. So we have... That's part of what... This is just kind of like a learning. This is a Buddhist psychology course. This is epistemology and psychology. Epistemology applies more to the basic cognition, how it arises, and its different... its range of validity from the worst non-valid to the better non-valid to the most valid. Studying that, the ways we know and the quality of knowing, that's one... It's epistemology. In psychology, we study intention, basically, and action. So consciousness is both receptive and active.

[78:05]

Yin-yang are involved in consciousness. The self-receiving and inactive. So our samadhi in our practice is to be concentrated on the receiving, and enacting. Receiving and enacting. Every moment is a receive, a cognition, a life, a self, and then there's an activity. And the activity is also interdependent, just like the receiving is interdependent. So we meditate on this. So, of course, Genjo Koan goes very well with this Samadhi. So these two sutras, these two scriptures, kind of like very mutually illuminating. One is more epistemological. The other is more psychological. But actually, both of them have both epistemology and psychology.

[79:11]

So I assume more people have their hands raised. OK. I'm dead. Yes? Will? Pardon? I can't hear you. Ex-cathedra, am I aware of that word? Yes, I have been accused of that. Yes, what about it? Pardon? You mean sometimes when you're listening to me you feel like I'm being ex-cathedra? I agree. It means speaking from the chair. It means, you know, the cathedral is based on the word cathedral.

[80:22]

The cathedral is the place where they have the cathedral. there's a chair in the cathedral and the bishop sits in the chair and speaks from the chair and the chair is the chair in this big building so when the bishop talks it has this this impact coming from that chair in the big building rather than the bishop talking at a coffee shop and saying yeah it's really important to pay attention to what you're up to you know the bishop is different in the coffee shop than sitting in the chair in the big building with the robes on and the bells and the incense and the stained glass windows and yikes what is this am I aware of that yeah I'm glad you are too yes Karen

[81:23]

Sometimes if I look at my intention, I'll come up with, you know, well, I thought I had this intention, but the result of what I'm doing is something else, so apparently that wasn't real. I thought I was doing this intention, but when I'm actually doing this intention, it's really that's right. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Keep studying. Keep studying. As you see, first you look and you think, oh, this is my intention. Then you say, oh, maybe that's my real intention. And maybe this is really, really my real intention. Then you get to a place where you finally remember that we're instructed in the Buddha Dharma not to actually settle on this is the real intention. But realize that sometimes we feel like, oh, this is the real intention. So we're not really saying, you look for the intention, but you're not really trying to see what the intention is.

[82:31]

You're just trying to find it. So you can find out that it actually transcends being is or isn't. But at first it seems like something's a little bit more is than the other is was. And then the next one seems like that really is much more what it is than what I thought it was is at that time. And finally you come to realize that there is no actual inherent self to this intention. In other words, you can't fix it into like what it really is. But you can see how it comes to be. And seeing how it comes to be, although you don't find out what it really is, that's liberating. So just keep studying. But accept that sometimes you feel like that really is what it is. Or, in the case of other people, that's really what they meant. That's really where they're at. Rather than, I think that way. Is that enough now?

[83:34]

No? It's getting so late. Let's have a vote. Should we go on or not? Raise your hands if you want to go on. Raise your hands if you had enough. It's kind of a tie. Wouldn't you say, those who don't want to go on, would you say it's a tie? Or do you think you won? Yeah, but I haven't decided which way to vote. Pardon? Pardon? Oh, you have? Well, I'm sorry, Holly, yes. Okay. Well, for the sake of those who are feeling like it's enough, perhaps those of us who wish to go on can join those of us who would like to not go on.

[84:40]

the extent to...

[84:49]

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