Last night you asked us to mention some things that you might elaborate a little bit. So on Sunday we referred to practices relating to causation, to tendency arising and to emptiness of trying to grow right. And I wonder if you would. elaborate or point to practice it in the last two areas to the extent that you can. To the extent that I agree. So I thought I would give an overview of studying the bodhisattva way, an overview of the study of the precepts, bodhisattva precepts.

[01:07]

So you have the overview to carry with you and apply, used to apply your practice of English. So the whole thing starts, the whole practice of bodhisattva starts with the bodhisattva, bodhisattva's heart, bodhisattva's spirit, bodhisattva breath. And of course at some point this wonderful thing may happen, which is the birth of the wish to achieve awakening for the welfare of all beings and the hope that all beings will achieve the greatest happiness before oneself.

[02:11]

That's kind of the essence of the bodhisattva spirit, is that wish. The bodhisattva spirit has more to it than that, but that's the essence of it. So, bodhicitta is So we've been walking and talking about this all this past three and a half weeks. Now, we have then, as a way to discover, as a way to reveal the Bodhisattva Spirit, and as a way to see it and clarify it and deepen it and live it, we have the practice of zazen. Some people just in while sitting formally in a formal zazen posture have discovered boyichitta.

[03:13]

But if you're walking around Green Gulch or walking around the city and you are in a state of mind such that this bodhicitta is revealed to you, that context of revelation is what we call zazen. Zazen is a context of revelation of your bodhicitta. It's also the context for clarifying it, developing it, and realizing it. That's why when you sit a Zazan, although you may be involved in following your breathing, or start studying a koan, or some other thing, or perhaps reciting 47 vows, or working on your posture, whatever you're working on now, whatever your mind is occupied with, still, the main thing is you're trying to be open to revelation of the true spirit of the Forti Safra, true meaning of the Forti Safra vows.

[04:32]

And then, equivalent to this is to say that the Forti Safra priesthoods are offered as ways to do the same thing. We offer the bodhisattva precepts as his teachings about how his teachings help us reveal and discover his bodhisattva in our life and protect it. And so Zazen and what we call Zazen and the precepts are both for the same purpose and they help each other because they're somewhat different emphasis. Zazen emphasize concentration on one thing. Precepts bring on multiplicity. But Zazen shows that the one thing and the precepts show the multiplicity of Zazen. So by Zazen and precepts together We can understand each other, plus both of them are to protect and develop, to reveal, protect, and develop, and realize this body chipped up.

[05:41]

It's my awakening. Which, as its essence, is the concern for the welfare of others. Okay? So that's the big sign. Yes? Could you say a little bit more about how Zazlan used one thing? Um... Well, it's one thing because Zazen is the fact that all things are themselves. Zazen in its ultimate sense is, we say, you know, it's unconstructedness to stillness. Unconstructedness is this... It's in Chinese, they write it like this. In the Sanskrit they call it a-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-

[07:02]

Not that it doesn't mean that. So translating this as sometimes they translate all Sanskrit as unconditioned. I don't think that's a good translation. I think it's better to call it unmade. Because literally it's not Sanskrit, not made. And here, too, this is wu-wei. They refer to the wu-wei. Sometimes translated as non-doing or not-doing. Wu-wei. Have you ever heard that in Taoism? This means without. making, not making anything. So Zazen is one thing in the sense that it is asamscripta. So Dogen says, this is what's in Bendowa when Dogen says, unconstructedness and stillness, this is the character, Wu Wei. And also in the Bendowa when they say, it's beyond all human agency, you know, but totally unfabricated and uncreated and unborn, okay, is Zazen in its ultimate sense. Which means that whatever's happening, okay, like if you're thinking of a banana, or if you're coughing, or if you're angry, or if you're confused, whatever experience you have, okay, that's a constructed thing.

[08:15]

But the fact that that thing is a constructed thing is not a constructed thing. Because the fact that whatever's happening is whatever's happening is always the same. It's always the same thing. The way that K is K is exactly the same way that Fu is Fu. Precisely the same thing, namely, just by nature of its phenomenal existence, there is precisely that and nothing more. That's the unborn quality of every experience. And the fact that something is itself and nothing more, the unconstructed, unborn quality of it, is precisely why it's not what it is. that includes its emptiness and liberation from itself. So Zazin is immediately the suchness of things and the liberation of things. It is the way they come together and the fact that they can be no other way and the fact that they're nothing more than that, that's their unborn quality.

[09:16]

And that's Zazin, unconstructedness and stillness. And that unconstructedness and stillness is where nothing interferes with the revelation of our of our natural tendency to be concerned for all beings who give us life. So that's the, we trip upon us today sometimes and then we have a glimpse of our heart. And if you keep practicing those then, it keeps developing that, yes. Just to expand on that's their unborn quality, how, what, unborn, describe that. So, you have something happening, whatever. There's some phenomenal experience. That is born. The phenomenal experience is born. But once the thing appears, the fact that it's nothing more than that, that doesn't get born. And that doesn't die. That doesn't come and go. All things, as they appear, the fact that they're nothing more than that, that's in a sense eternal.

[10:22]

That doesn't come and go. That's Dharma. The things come and go. But Dhamma doesn't come and go. Dhamma is the way things come and go, and the way they are when they're appearing, and the fact that they're nothing other than that, and the fact that they're due to conditions, that's Zazna. And that's not born. And that's also your unborn Buddha mind. Your Buddha mind is nothing more or less than precisely how it's coming to be right now. That's not a born thing. Permanent? It's not permanent, no, but it's not born. Permanent is the opposite of annihilation. Eternal is not... Eternal doesn't mean it doesn't change. Or absolute. It's not absolute, no.

[11:24]

This is the truth. There's nothing to it. This whole thing is empty, right? This is just a way of talking from the point of view of liberation from phenomena. So that's why we use the term ultimate rather than absolute. I think there's no absolutes in Buddhism. But there's things the way they look from the point of view of being free. Let me just... So that's... That's not exactly a digression, but... So, this unborn side, or this paname side of our practice is the way the practice is from the point of view of the ultimate. Okay? So, the bodhisattva spirit is first approached usually through words. Words are approached usually through spirit, or words are approached through spirit, too. So one side of the practice is the word side.

[12:26]

Or the story side. Or the conventional side. The conventional aspect of the precepts. And then the other side is from the ultimate point of view, point of view of, I'm looking at it from the point of view of liberation or awakening. But this is the first, you start with this. This is number one, the conventional. And based on the conventional, you can receive the teachings of the ultimate. Right? You've seen that before, right? Now, in terms of what I was talking about on Sunday, and also David asked me to elaborate on, let me just say, again, that there are, of course, there's definitely a number of coverings of our Bodhisattva Spirit, but there's three...

[13:47]

basic types of coverings over our passionate, enlightened heart. One is called the coverings due to action. Or of action. Due to and of. Due to past action, but also present action. These are action coverings or action observations. Where's the distinction between D2 and O? Some things you're doing and some things you're thinking and some ways you're acting and some attitude you have are from what you've already done. Okay? They're conditioned by things we've done. Yes. Right? But some of those things that are conditioned by what you've done before are not ostracious.

[14:51]

They're not what? They're not obstructing you. Okay? Okay. All right? And other things you're doing right now are also conditioned by past action, but the action itself and the thought itself and the attitude itself and the value, the current action, the current mental and physical and verbal trauma are currently obscuring. So it's current. It's not just past. I would include present action, too, as a current observation. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it should just be past. So maybe I should be careful about that. Definitely past. This is called in Sanskrit, karma avarana. Avarana means covering, obstruction, hindrance. Karma avarana. You ask all avarana? Just like the sounds. One of those easy ones.

[15:52]

Doesn't have to be dossier. Splashes or anything. Next is defilement or afflictions. Defilement or afflictions. A couple of minutes. Okay. They're both over here on the side of conventional practice. In Sanskrit, this is called Klesha. K-L-S with a slash over the top. Klesha. And you remember I told you about those four afflictions that come up with the self? Okay. self-pride, self-view, self-ignorance, self-love. Those four afflictions are the fundamental afflictions that come up with the self.

[16:54]

That's an example of these places. There's others. And then the final covering, which is actually, you deal with over on the, in some sense, over in terms of ultimate practices, is what's called nyeya bhavarana. And nyeya can be called know-ho, know-ho, or you can also say knowing. Whenever you know an object eternal to yourself, whenever you're aware of some object, That awareness of an object kind of creates some subtle covering. Or just the fact that we know objects fundamentally is an obscuration that we have to learn how to deal with. Because when you know objects and some sense of self arises in your mind in conjunction with knowing objects, and then when the self arises, those afflictions arise.

[18:01]

But even after you remove those afflictions, Still, there's an obscuration due to this constant arising of the sense of something other, or something external, or just something known. The subtlest knowing creates a little covering over our heart. These are the three. Now, these three are removed by, respectively. The first one, again, I said... Removed by, but I kind of take it back when I say removed by, because that's somewhat misleading. Because they're not actually ultimately really there. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to remove them if they were ultimately there. Their appearances due to vision. So really it's like, sometimes they're called removed, but also basically we can see through them. So the first one is removed by realization of belief in cause and effect.

[19:08]

The second one is removed by realizing the selflessness of the personal self. Or the emptiness of personal self. Or the lack of self of the person. In Sanskrit it's called Pudkala nairatnya. Nai means not, atnya, self, no self, but the Pudkala of the person. That removes the obscuration of defilement, of conflicting, afflictive, disturbing conceptions. The next one is removed by seeing the selflessness of selfishness.

[20:34]

Or the selflessness of liberation from selfishness. When you see the selflessness of the self, you're liberated from selfishness. personal human being kind of selfishness, but you haven't yet been liberated from believing in the self of liberation, you still might think liberation is something. So this is Prajnaparamita where you even go beyond, you go even beyond wisdom. You get liberated, you get liberated from wisdom. And this is called in Sanskrit dharma nairatmya. In other words, you realize the selflessness of all things, including liberation, through selflessness. Okay, now, another thing I would say at this point is that this is, at this point you become, you get relieved, you get relief from your belief.

[21:54]

You now get relieved from believing in cause and effect. You don't have to believe it anymore. You don't have to believe, you get relieved from all your beliefs. So I used to say, you know, sometimes when people ask me in this period, what is the belief of Zen? I say, well, it's about becoming free of your beliefs. We don't have beliefs. But now I think I should say, well, we believe in cause and effect on the street. We should say that. We believe, you know, we try to not cause trouble, we try to do good. That's our belief. And by studying that, we finally reach a place where we become free of that belief and you just finally see how good works and how bad good works and then we naturally don't do what we can see will be a problem for ourselves and others. But now we can't see that so clearly because of his obscuration.

[22:58]

So now you have to believe. Believe that doing good is actually not just leading to good. It doesn't just lead to good. Was that a person? We thought maybe he was a bird. We were working. Are you okay? Would you hold him and keep him warm? I didn't. Well, like, to some extent you can see, right? Well, I mean, I don't know how you do it, but I mean, you can see to some extent, right? Like, you can see.

[23:59]

There's some things you already know about that if you do, they lead to results which you aren't happy about. You know that already, right? And a lot of people can see it, for example, in some scope. But you see it in a bigger scope. It just happens. Spontaneous. It comes with... All you gotta do is like... see through your belief in his self and then all this other stuff gets revealed too. In other words, we stop ignoring how the self happens, we see how other stuff happens too. But it's hard for us to watch how the self happens because our habit is to not. But once you see how the person's self happens, once you see how the self of things happen, once you see the dependent core rising of that, then you also see this other stuff too. It just comes along with it. And before Before you see that, we have to look at how that happens to the best we can see.

[25:04]

We just have to be careful within our limited vision of watching not so much how it works, you can't see that clearly, but trying our best within a conventional world to do what's unharmful and to do what's helpful within our limited vision. Now, that process is the first step in coming back to ourself. because when we are watching carefully what we do, we notice ourselves, we start to see ourselves, and we notice the trouble we have doing that. It brings us back in a very straightforward, concrete way of dealing with ourself, of noticing, well, I tried to do something helpful, but I didn't, and I felt terrible, and blah, blah, blah. And that's where confession comes in, is to say, well, this is what I think was good, and I didn't do it. Or this is what I think was good, or I wanted to be good, and I did it. So you make this commitment to, well, the belief and the commitment are separate.

[26:07]

You can make the commitment without the belief, or you can have the belief and make the commitment to do this. And when you do that, then this brings you back to yourself. It brings you back to yourself more and more. This helps you settle with yourself in the, in some sense, the most, I don't like the word gross, but some other word, concretement, the more concrete aspect of your dualistic sense of I'm the separate self and I do these things. I'm a karmic being. I do this, I do that. Now, I believe that doing good is good, so I will try to do good. And I will try to not do good. Now, ultimately, there is no karma. That's the ultimate position. But now, I'm talking about from the side of believing that there is karma. Or, put it this way, if I believe there's karma, And if I think I can do something by myself, then I should believe that what I think is good, if I do that, that will be good.

[27:11]

And what I think is bad, if I do that, that will be bad. And also, part of what's good is also to confer with others about what they think is good and bad, too. That's part of the process. So renunciation means, comes in renunciation and confession are applied to this stage, for starters. Now, and one other thing I want to say as a kind of background thing is that we have this thing called Zen Sickness. And that is discussed in a very nice way in case number 11. of the Book of Serenity, which are called Yunnan's Two Sicknesses. Actually he talks about five, but the name of the case is Two Sicknesses. And these sicknesses are sicknesses of beings who have realized the selflessness of the person and who have realized to some extent the selflessness of Dharma.

[28:25]

says that there's two circumstances in circulating the light. So once you realize the light of the precepts, in other words, the light of the precepts is revealed when you see the selflessness of the precepts. What comes with the seeing is selflessness of you, yourself. Once you start seeing that light, there can develop certain circumstances which are due to not circulating the light fully through your life. having the light just be sort of like in one part of your psyche or one part of your behavior pattern or one part of your practice and half circulating fully. So he talks about there the different ways that the light doesn't circulate fully. And then by bringing our attention to the incomplete circulation of the light and meditating on that, we can break through those instructions and more and more thoroughly circulate the selflessness. And so David asked about practices applying to the last two or the last one?

[29:29]

I'll take what I can guess. But I meant the last as well. Yeah. Does that overview make sense to you? Any questions about the overview that I'm proposing? Do you understand now what these three observations are somewhat and what practice is addressed, what kind of vision? The first one is addressed by belief. Harm observation is addressed by believing in the teaching of cause and effect. The second one is relieved by vision. by seeing, and that seeing is what's called, you know, kensho in Zen, or in the Abhidharma tradition it's called darsana marga, the path of seeing. You see this, you stop believing, you say sakkaya drishti. You give up the drishti, the view of sat, the truth of the kaya, of the self, the body of the self.

[30:35]

That's the entrance into the Buddhist path. So, by culminating, as you realize, as you move this affliction, you enter into actual Buddhist practice, selfless practice. However, that's not the end of the story, because then you need to homogenize that with all your behaviors, which is called the bhavanamarga, which means to bring that vision into the next vision, which is to see the emptiness of all phenomena and all experience, including wisdom, including Buddha, including the path, everything dependently co-arising. So, studying dependently co-arising is how you study the dependently co-arising of the self, by studying how your sense of self is a dependently co-arising experience, which we do have a sense of our self. We do, and we operate, and it's part of our deal. But that dependently co-arises.

[31:38]

By meditating on the dependent co-arising of the Self, you will see the emptiness of the Self, or the selflessness of the Self. Then once you realize liberation, or the light of the way the Self actually exists at the independent co-arising, then you also meditate on the dependent co-arising of the dependent co-arising of emptiness. but then selflessness is also empty, which means that it's no different from your ordinary world. And then you can go back, and still it isn't that you don't practice careful observation of your conduct, it's just that you no longer have to believe that that's good. You can see how wonderful all the different things you are doing, because you see, depending on what arises, you are more quiet to all your behaviors. And gradually, all your habits come into view and are checked off from that point of view. And then you see the dependent core rising of all these habits. The habits don't stop as soon as you have vision. All these habits are still coming. Then you take the vision and apply it to your habits over many years.

[32:39]

The vision can happen like that. The vision of selflessness happens like that. It takes a long time to get to that point through careful observation on the law of cause and effect. But if a vision can happen in a very short period of time, it'd be very thorough through a very short period of time. If then you take that vision and that light and you circulate it through all your behaviors for a long time, that can take many, many years. At most, it takes seven lifetimes. That's the rule a lot of the other hand. Sometimes it only takes one. You do it and you can clean the picture in one. It mostly takes seven to clear up the whole thing. But as a bodhisattva, even if it only takes seven, you still would be born innumerable more times until all beings were saved. But in terms of clearing up your own karma and your own habits and getting the life circulating fully, it would take just seven more life forms. So, and the practice of realizing the selflessness of a person is the same practice as realizing the selflessness of liberation, the selflessness of emptiness, of emptiness, emptiness.

[33:51]

Namely, we studied the pentacle arising of self, the pentacle arising of emptiness. Yes? So where does the dependent co-arising of other objects fall? The same place. That's what you learn, you see. You learn that self only can arise in dependent co-arising with other. So it's in effect identical to... It's not identical, exactly. Yeah, the self is identical with the other. You see that. Self goes, other goes. Independent self grows, independent others grows. When you realize the selflessness of self, you realize the selflessness of others. Again, self is identical with others, but it's identical in a completely contradictory way. It's not the regular kind of identical. It's, by definition, 100% contradictorily identical.

[34:55]

And you see that. So the self, you can only have a self when there's an object which isn't the self. And in the origin of the sense of self, first there was, first there is, something is aware of something outside itself. Then this idea of self is born. So that's the theory of the evolution of the sense of self, is it's born at the juncture where there can be some separation in consciousness, and then what is separated is called external. That pattern, that's the pinnacle arising of the sense of self. Once the sense of self has risen, you can't necessarily catch the birth of it, so now you've got it. So now you've already got this other self, another. Now, you watch how they always, you got both of them all the time. All around the self is the other. So you watch the dependent core rising of that situation. You watch how, in fact, how you find, some people talk to me about, I've heard that in Zen you sort of have to have the self before you can, you know, study it and become free of it and forget it.

[36:06]

That's right. So this person wasn't sure if he had a self. I said, well, just check and see where you feel irritated from, where you feel attacked from, where you feel judged from. And is that kind of like, can you feel it all around? Can you feel your butt judged? Can the back of your neck judged? Can your stomach judged? Can your eyes judged? Can your face judged? Can your ears judged? Can you feel your skills judged from various angles? So check it out and see if you have a nice round sense of being related to, irritated by, attacked, judged, or also fondled and appreciated from all directions. If you do, you got a nice round self, go to work. If not, there's some places where you can't sense. Like they said, I don't know how I would feel. Well, go check it out in more detail so you have a sense of it. Or sometimes people are, you know, you've incorporated elements of other people's selves in yourself and they're not really yours. And you don't think so, but you're kind of confused about it. So you should clarify what the self is. That's good. But anyway, the other is all around the self and is defining it.

[37:08]

And the self also defines the other. There's a mutual dependable horizon. Also around the self, you feel anxiety. Because this other is hemming you in. Only because you hemmed yourself in by saying I wasn't the other. But as soon as you say the other is not you, then the other starts pressing on you. Sometimes the pressure is pleasurable. Sometimes the pressure is... unpleasant, but always it's hemming you in because you say, I'm not it. By rejecting that, it presses you. That's that anxiety, choking, suffocating feeling of the other. You meditate on that dependent co-arising of anxiety. Then you watch fear. How does the fear dependent co-arising relationship to having difficulty facing anxiety and moving into the future and making it an object? And you watch the dependent co-arising of fear. All this stuff is focused on the self, though. The self is, you watch how the self is the self in any sort of disconnus.

[38:10]

The self is, all experience must be either feeling, perception, formation, consciousness, or form. It's got to be, there's no other, you can't think of any other experience that we have. If anything else you say, we'll say, well, that belongs in one of those categories. So you've got experience. Now, is it the self? You look at it for a second and you say, yeah, that's me. Then you look at it again and you say, no, it's a feeling. So you see self and feeling dependently polarized. And you can't, if you reach for a feeling, you get the self. If you reach for a self, you get a feeling. Or in another moment, you reach for a self, you get a concept. You reach for a concept and you get a self. But then if you look at the self that you got when you reach for the concept and you got a self, you realize actually it's a concept. So you start realizing the dependent co-arising of self and concept, or the five skandas and self, that there's not ever a self aside from the five skandas, and there's rarely a five skandas aside from the self, for us. So they dependently co-arise. So you start to see that there's not something independent of the self, but also the self isn't like kicked out of the ballpark, it's still there.

[39:14]

The way it always was, and the way it is, is it's a dependently co-arisen thing. And you reach for the thing and you get the conditions for it. You reach for the conditions and you always wind up yourself. Say, I want to get some conditions. You reach out and you get yourself. You know? Or you try to get yourself and you get conditions. We had this nice sculptor who came, you know, this is a Gershi statue, you know, in the city center. She carved it and then after we cut a gear where she said, you can't even The sculptor sculpted himself. He tried to make Suzuki Roshi, but made himself. Now, most of us who knew Suzuki Roshi, I think originally felt like that, but over the years we gradually made the statue into Suzuki Roshi. But when he originally made it, it was the sculptor. But the reason why it was the sculptor, because the sculptor was trying to make Suzuki Roshi. If you try to sculpt somebody else, you wind up to be a sculptor.

[40:18]

If you try to sculpt yourself, you get the other person. That's the great heart work, you know, is to realize you're always sculpting yourself. Then you get the other. That's just because it's dependent on what arises, you see. Whatever you reach for, you never get that, you always get not that. Because in order to find something, you have to locate it by its conditions. So you get its conditions. But if you look for its conditions, then of course the only way to look for its conditions is by using it. So you get it. This is the Pinnacle Horizon example of studying it. And the difficulty of studying the Pinnacle Horizon yourself is that you have to be on site And we find studying the self rather nauseating and boring. Although we love the self, we don't like studying the self. We like protecting it. We like assuming it's there. We like the idea that it exists and, you know, we love it.

[41:19]

And we always come from that point of view. But we don't like to look at it and study it. It is the omnipresent, true study. that we should always be doing, that we have trouble doing. And not only is it boring. I shouldn't say it is boring. It's not boring. It's just that boring is the great demon that comes to appear to stop us from studying. It's not actually boring or unboring. It's just simply our job as meditators. But various kinds of forces. Another way that sometimes we get distracted is by being exciting. and lots of fun and interesting and valuable. That's another way that you distract yourself from it. That's an early distraction. That'll do it pretty well. A lot of these students find it really interesting for a little while, and that keeps them away from it very nicely. But after that one doesn't keep you away from it, and you actually start studying it, then bored of crimson.

[42:28]

Most people never make it past that one. Or fear. Huh? Or fear. Or fear, yeah. Fear isn't, fear is an early one. After there's no fear anymore, no excitement, you know, fear, it's not even like you don't, it's not like, you're not patting yourself on the back anymore, you're actually just doing the work. Then, then the system, the self-system, the habit power sends in the big one. the last-ditch effort. And we may have to spend quite a few years working with boarding. But it's not that the thing you're actually on board, it's that this self-clinging system is like trying to tell you, no, no, you have better things to do. This is not directly promoting the self. Looking at the self doesn't directly promote it. And it doesn't promote, looking at the self does not promote the belief in the independent existence of self. It does not promote that. It gradually or rapidly undermines it.

[43:31]

Because when you look at it, it just does not hold up. So, this is boring. Look at something else. Anything but this. And then the habit, just being left alone, gets stronger again. So that's how you, this is a just a little snippet of how you study the dependent core rising in the self, in terms of scoundrels or self-other or anxiety. Because all around anxiety is exactly the perimeter, right around, it's nice to delineate yourself. And again, if you have anxiety like in 270 degrees, then it's very important to find out about the other 90 degrees of anxiety because you haven't actually spotted yourself. You only have 270 degrees of anxiety. So it's very important in this process, and I will say to you, is there anything you have to say to me that is kind of hard to tell me?

[44:37]

that we all have some sense of our dependent core arising. Whenever you feel anxiety, you have dependent core risings right there because that anxiety arises with the self. You're worried about yourself or what you care about, which is yourself. You're worried about yourself or your friends or your babies or your temple or your money or your country or your planet or your galaxy. You're worried about something about you. That's what causes anxiety. And some of us have anxiety in like some quadrant of our, you know, the sphere of our existence. Well, that's good. Then you can study the kind of polarizing there. And that's good. Study it there. But then, open it up and say to people, you know, careful, gently say, you know, is there something I'm overlooking? Do you have something to say to me that's hard to tell me? Because oftentimes they don't want to tell you that thing because they sense that you're guarded there and that they tell you, you might not be receptive.

[45:42]

So they might be afraid to tell you that. But generally speaking, the real area of growth is in becoming thorough in our study of the Pentecost Horizon is to pay attention to what we are abandoning or rejecting. to pay attention to the people that we reject, have abandoned, or think aren't important for us to think about. In other words, pay attention to people that we don't feel any anxiety about. And if you start paying attention, the anxiety will start to develop. In other words, you'll feel the self-other thing happening there. Why do it? Why do that? Can you answer that question another way, Miss? I mean, why open up to more anxiety? Yeah, if you have no problem with somebody, why go in here and make some? It's not to make it. This is not to say, please attack me. It's to say, do you have some problem with me that you're not telling me because you're afraid I'll, you know, it's hard for you to do that.

[46:48]

They already have the problem and they already have the message for you. You're already anxious about them. I mean, that's probably what the problem they have with you is. But you're in denial. You know, you don't want to look at this aspect to yourself. So I don't ask for trouble, that's not the point. If you ask for information, you'll round out the picture of yourself. Which turns out might give rise to more anxiety, but actually it just brings your anxiety conscious. We actually are totally, you know, what do you call it, globally anxious about everything that's not us. But most of us feel like, well, I have enough anxiety. I don't need that anymore. Okay, fine. Fine. And when you're settled with that, and if you want to know, now, if you've really studied the total causation of your sense of self, well, what do you think? You can say, well, yes. And somebody can say, did you say yes? And you can say... Yes.

[47:49]

Well, maybe I could learn more. Do you have something to say? Well, I do, but I'm afraid to say it. Please say it. Well, are you sure? Yeah. What? How about this? I didn't ask you to say that. Now you've gone too far. That was really unwarranted. Last time I ever asked you to sing. And you recover, you know, come back in a few years and say, now what did you say again? Little by little we open up. It's that, what do you call it? It's that thing about the princess who, you know, the Miller's daughter who spun, who got Rumpelstiltskin to spin a room full of straw into gold and her reward is to get a room twice as big to spin into gold. That's your reward.

[48:51]

Your reward for facing a new aspect of yourself. You know, straw. What's straw, you know? What's straw, you know? Anxiety. Anxiety is gold. For a person who's trying to learn about herself. And your reward will be to realize that anxiety is gold in one aspect of your life, where it's to reveal more of who you are. Your reward will be, you know, you get to more anxiety. which will also reveal more of yourself. And when you can finally see clearly what you are, which is most of us have a hard time clearly seeing what you are and you clearly see what you aren't. In other words, when you clearly see what you are, it pivots and turns into the conditions for what you are. And when you look at the conditions for what you are, suddenly it pivots and you see yourself. So you see this resonance between all the conditions for you and yourself. It's not that you're nothing. It's actually that you're everything. So you switch from I'm here and there's my life to all those things in the world are me.

[49:53]

That thing is switching from. You go and do everything. Everything arrives and then there's you. You make that switch. But until you feel everything converging on you, or feel yourself converging on everything, it's a partial switch and you feel a little bit of a switch. Like one time I went out of the Tassar Zendo and I saw a blue jay and I finally really accepted the blue jays as the legitimate residents of this planet. particularly legitimate residents of my monastery. I could see, you know, I could see our comradeship, you know, and that they were working hard at practice there, too. Outdoors, like that, in the winter. But that's just one little opening, you know. There's so many others. That's why we say, with no exception, we're dedicated to the welfare of all beings. which means open ourselves to the anxiety we feel of all beings, and get in there and work with that.

[51:03]

So this will lead to, the idea is this will lead to realizing the depended core rising of the person, and then liberation from belief in self, and then the obscuration due to afflictions drops away, and you see the light of the practice, the light of yourself, the light of the precepts. The precepts also lose their self-limited type definitions, and you start to see that there's not 16 precepts, there's just one. And when you practice not killing, you take refuge in Buddha. And all the other precepts are also practiced when you practice not killing. You can see that. Then it isn't like, oh geez, I've got to practice not killing again today. It's more interesting than that in a way. You get to practice all the precepts when you're just in one act of concentrating on the practice of not killing. You get to practice all the wonderful practices. It's really not that difficult to give yourself completely to when you start to have that kind of vision.

[52:10]

This is really wonderful. But still, then there's a possibility of stopping there and being, you know, a happy bodhisattva. And have your happiness be a self. Or your liberation and devotion to the path be a self. So then you have to meditate on that. And there again, that's when you need help. You need to bring your liberation and share with somebody else so they can also see if you really that's really circulating or if there's some holding in your liberation like your liberation should go this way and that way so at Zen Center people have some liberation and they try to work with it in this community and the community works with the person who has some liberation and there's that tug and pull swirling around and the limits of the awakening gets tested and so that's good so the person realizes there's some limit in this I'm holding to this attachment

[53:12]

And so, like we say, you know, the perfection of meditation is that you can give up the bliss of meditation. Right? Like Zizakurashi said, when I sit sometimes, I don't know if he said sometimes, but when I sit, sometimes I can sit forever. But when the bell rings, I get up and do ki'i. Unless I have to go to the bathroom. It's the giving up of the bliss that perfects the bliss, not the bliss that perfects the meditation. So if you do bodhisattva precept practice and you study the self through those precepts, use those precepts to bring yourself back to yourself, then use those precepts to help, first of all, in terms of belief in cause and effect, they bring you back concretely to yourself. Then by meditating on the dependent co-arising of self and the precepts, those actions, the self gets clearer and clearer, the other becomes clearer and clearer, the dependently co-arising nature of self, another becomes clearer and clearer, and you get this relief.

[54:16]

Then, after that, take the next step and give up that relief. study the relief, study the, study, you know, that's what Buddha did. After he was awakened, he reviewed his liberation. He studied his, he was liberated from self-clinging by seeing the dependent co-rising of the self. Then after he was awakened, he spent 49 more days reviewing the liberation, purify the liberation so that he could give it up and go to work. Okay. So that's, That's the part that you have to continue. You have to study your liberation. So after you experience some freedom from some attachment or some anxiety, then steep yourself in that freedom. Meditate. Meditate. Steep yourself in that. And sometimes people do have these experiences and they... then it's good if they go back and sit more in the middle of, or stand more in the middle of that liberation and watch to see if there's any sticking places.

[55:18]

And if they can't see any sticking places, come back and say, I can't find any sticking places. Like, what is his name, did, Huayka. Huayka came back, Bodhidharma said, okay, when you see objects, don't activate the mind, you know, inwardly or outwardly, you know, have no involvements. Then he got there where he had no involvements, you know. He came back and told Bodhidharma, okay, I'm clean. You know, I can relate to objects within understanding independent co-arising. It's not me and them anymore. I can see. He said, well, you know, Bodhidharma says, isn't that nihilism? And he said, no, he demonstrated it. He said he wasn't stuck in his liberation. But there's many, many stories, not all of which are recorded, of where the monk has liberation, he comes back, and it's stuck. And the teacher doesn't have to do much all the time, just when a person comes and says they're free, usually they hear what that sounds like.

[56:23]

If the teacher just doesn't do anything, they feel confirmation or lack of confirmation. And if confirmation excites them, then they know they're off. And if lack of confirmation depresses them, then they know they're off. Meantime, the teacher didn't do anything, maybe, other than just sort of like perhaps being dozing. So I restrain myself from telling many stories about that stage of religious. Because I think your questions are more important at this point. But do you see the overall picture there? So at that place, you know, the precepts, there's no karma anymore. And I should say there isn't any, but it's empty. And this is really great to see. Our karma has been... has been seen through, and therefore you do not do any karma anymore because you don't think in terms of yourself doing things. So you stop making karma, and the results of karma that will keep raining down on you, it doesn't mean they won't keep coming, you will handle them skillfully.

[57:33]

When sickness comes, when self comes, when problems of your friends come, you'll now be skillful because you'll be able to relate to the affliction through the vision of dependent core arising. So you put your hands right in the right place. The world will come and realize itself through your hands. And so you can play your part really well now. It doesn't mean you still don't run into difficulties because they're coming. You still have more difficulties. But what's encouraging is to see somebody handle difficulties well. So Suzuki Roshi got sick at the end of his life. He got cancer. But, you know, the way he handled that was, it was just as cool as the way he handled his pre-cancer state from my point of view. I didn't feel like there was any diminution in his teaching, the way he coped with that cancer. So, if I remember how he looked when he was dealing with his illness, that teaching really was very clear.

[58:45]

very strong, very encouraging. I would prefer he didn't have cancer, but that's what he had, and that's what he worked with, and he did a really great job. And I hope that when I have my illnesses, that, you know, my later illnesses, that I will be able to handle them as kindly and alertly and compassionately as he did if I'm in as much pain as he was. He was in a lot of pain. So, it's not so much what you're dealing with, but how you deal with it. And if you're free of self-clinging, your hands are free to be used appropriately by the circumstances. That's why in the end, you know, there's nothing there called liberation, because you're right back in the mud with everybody, coping with ordinary daily events, just the same as everybody.

[59:52]

You have just as much pain, but, you know, put your hands up, with freedom and appropriateness. So this is like ultimate. But even the ultimate is dangerous. The light is dangerous. The teaching of cause and effect is dangerous. It's heavy, very heavy teaching, very dangerous. And it's dangerous the way heavy things are dangerous. The ultimate teachings are dangerous in a different way. They're not heavy. They're light. They're lightweight, ungraspable, and radiant. They can also be dangerous. So you maybe know. I met somebody one time who said, oh, Zen priest. I know what they say. They say, oh, I'm a Zen priest. Therefore, I drink, I smoke, I eat meat, and et cetera, because I'm a Zen priest.

[60:54]

That's where some people think of Zen priests in Japan. But they say they can do whatever they want because they're Zen priests. Since they're free, whatever, you know. And Trungpa Rinpoche, you know, did some amazing things. Boy, he was alive. He drank, apparently. I mean, I saw him. He did some other stuff, too. And so he did that. And some of his students tried to copy him. Maybe you've heard about them trying to copy him. I know many of the students who tried to do what they did. It didn't work for any of them. They all had a real hard time, you know, doing what he did, trying to drink and stuff like that. So they weren't, they didn't know how to do it. And some Zen priests also made me Japan think that they can drink and smoke and et cetera, et cetera, and get by with it. But, you know, it doesn't really work. There's a danger there, you know, of freedom. And can you drink again? How much can you drink?

[61:58]

How much can you smoke? How much can you do this and that? It's dangerous. Anyway, for now, most of us don't have that problem, fortunately. We have plenty of work just to try to, like, you know, not drink too much and not smoke too much and not eat too much and blah, blah, blah. So... If we can ground ourselves in that practice and really get into that, then we can hopefully study this more liberative teaching of dependent core arising. So this practice period now, this practice period is going on another six weeks or so. I would feel comfortable getting into studying dependent core arising because I feel you people are pretty grounded, especially the ones who have diarrhea. So... pretty grounded group. So I think you could study dependent core rising now and just keep staying grounded. But next practice period, we'll have to spend the first three weeks getting grounded like this again.

[63:02]

And then after that, we can study dependent core rising, hopefully. So, another, yes? When you were talking about the danger of the teaching of cause and effect, what I brought up this morning with you about the tendency to shift that into outbraining the victim. Could you talk about that danger? So that's one of the dangers of the teaching that if you do harmful things, that they'll come back at you. That's one of the dangers of that teaching, is that you'll interpret that. There's two ways, well, there's two main dangers. One is, the worst, of course, is that you'll forget, you'll apply this teaching to looking at other people's practice. And you'll say, oh, that person has that problem because that person did something bad. And there are stories of somebody having such and such a problem and some saint saying that that was due to such and such.

[64:10]

Some person who could see what the causes were says. But somebody who can't see, there's no stories of somebody who couldn't see, as exemplifying practice, of somebody who can't see saying this person must have done something bad because this is happening to them. That's not an example of practice. So that's not the way the practice is supposed to be applied. For you to look at other people who have problems and think to yourself, oh, they have that problem because of their past karma. Now, if you think that, it's okay to think that, but that's not the way, that's okay to think that way, but that's not the way this is supposed to be used. It's supposed to be used on yourself. Now, if you have a vision of what it was, and that's a vision, but it's not a blaming vision, it's just a vision. So, I was, you know, it's interesting if I could say, can I say something about you, Kim?

[65:13]

Yes. After the talk on Sunday, she almost, she rarely does it, she said afterwards, she said, I'm sorry, but I disagree with what you said. I think she said you were sorry or something like that. Anyway, she was uncomfortable, she disagreed, and she had this real strained, tense look when she said it. I said, okay, what is it, you know? So she told me what she believed. Do you want to say how you put it? I think I said that it was hard to believe that if, for instance, in that situation, if you'd hit me, it was my fault because of previous karma. Right. So that was her example. So I said, okay. Now, if I touched you and you liked it, you appreciated it, could you see that that was due to your previous karma? And that was easier for her. But I said, could you see that the fact that you like it has to do with the way you interpreted the touch? You see that, you see? So the fact that when somebody touches you, you interpret that as kindness or helpfulness, that's due to the way you interpret it, right?

[66:24]

Another person could interpret it as an assault. So really what's being said here is that the way you interpret what's happening has to do with the way you've interpreted things in the past. That's the basic thing. If you interpret that people are suffering, if you see that people are suffering, that has something to do with the fact that you've seen people suffer before. You've interpreted them as suffering before. Alright? If you think people are being cruel to you, you've thought that before. Now, If you think that people are being cruel to you, does that have anything to do with, is there anything unwholesome about thinking that people are being cruel to you? Where does that come from? Is somebody really truly out there being cruel to us? And if they are really truly being cruel to us, then if that is reality, then maybe we should just adjust to it.

[67:31]

But maybe there's a way to see it differently. to see that even people are being cruel to me. I'm not talking about people being cruel to you. I'm not talking about me being cruel to you. I'm talking about me being cruel to myself. And me being cruel to myself, one of the first ways I learn about that is by being cruel to others. And by being cruel to others and cruel to myself, I can learn about thinking about people being cruel to me. And so when things happen, I think people are being cruel to me. Vice versa, to think about being kind to others, I also can think about being kind to myself. Being kind to myself, I can think about being kind to others. When others are kind to you and you see that, that's because in the past you thought something like that too. Yes? Yes? I have another question along the same lines because in the Ehekoso Hotsuganmon, I was just thinking about it, Dogen said he invokes the compassion of the Buddhists and ancestors, male Buddhists and others, he stirs the compassion on us and free us from karmic effects and allows us to practice the way of that hindrance.

[68:54]

So we're definitely the same thing. Free us from karmic effects in a mental sense. Free us from seeing things in a way that Well, how would it work? Free us from seeing things in such a way that they're hindrances to us. So there is a change. It's not as if karma rolls through in a material way. Karma is primarily, primarily inner. It's fundamentally mental. Then it can ramify into speech and posture. Primarily it's the shape of your mind. If you have a mind and you think self and other, and you think something's out there and you think it's negative and you want to avoid it, that sets up a certain pattern in your mind, which then can get projected into your speech and your posture. When you think it mentally, or say it physically, or act it verbally, physically, or do it with your body, that's a pattern.

[70:01]

And one of the effects of that is that you will feel inwardly and outwardly that way again. A ghost of that experience will visit you again. and again, and again, and again. Or it won't visit you right away, and sometimes it'll visit you quite a bit later, and it'll get much bigger and heavier duty than what you originally did. So, the Buddha talks about, externally, there's a case of karma growing, you know, of things growing, like you said, you plant a seed and a big tree grows, with thousands of leaves and fruits. But internally, the growth rate is much faster and much greater. That's why we should pay close attention to the thoughts we have and realize they're really quite powerful. Another rule of karma is that

[71:04]

Just listen to this, it's kind of far out, but if you haven't had the thought before, which is kind of rare for a person, but if you haven't had the thought before of being burned by fire, the karma of seeing fire and thinking that it's burning you, you can walk through fire. When somebody else is walking next to you, who has had the thought of fire burning them before, they will be burned. But you will not be burned because the burning is something that you have to have experienced before. You won't be able to come up with that without having done it before. Now, presently, in the present, you could think it for the first time. That would be possible. But that would be quite different to sort of think of it the first time than to have it come upon you from past karma. Most of us have it in our past karma because fire is a fairly common part of our background. But they're suggesting something like that. Also, karma will manifest, but it can change depending on how you receive it.

[72:13]

It comes down on us, but if we receive it skillfully, It isn't that it did happen to us, but the way it will turn and it can be resolved by the way you handle it. If you handle it in a confessional way, in an accepting way, according to the law, and appreciate it as an opportunity for liberation, then the wall turns into a door. Part of our problem is that when positive things are happening to us, we don't apply the law there. which is easy to do it, but not necessary, because you could give by without it. When pleasant things are happening to us, we don't necessarily say, oh, this is because something good had happened, some wholesome, this is because, not necessarily wholesome thing I did, but this is because of some virtue or some skillfulness in the past, done either karmically or non-karmically by some being, which I have some kind of evolutionary relationship with.

[73:19]

If we do that with wholesome things, nice results of wholesome kindness, if we're doing it then, then when the screen gets turned and unwholesome things come in our face, we have a chance to continue the practice. So although it could be easy to do it when positive things are happening to us, we usually don't. Therefore, when negative things happen to us, we're kind of caught off guard, and then it's hard to get started because we're in pain or whatever, or we're having a hard time. But again, Suzuki Roshi was visited by cancer. Now you can look at this lifetime, things that happened to him. You know, he ate a lot of candy. He lived in Japan after the Second World War. Their food was bad, you know, stuff like that. There's causes in this life which could lead you to cancer. It isn't a great evil to eat a lot of candy, is it? It doesn't hurt people that much, you could say. But still, eating bad food can have an effect on you. But then there's also, you know... This picture's bigger than that. So anyway, he used a situation happening to him, which a lot of people said when he got cancer, they didn't like him having cancer.

[74:26]

They thought the Zen master should die another way. He was one of the first spiritual teachers that we know of in recent years to have cancer. Now a whole bunch of other ones got it, so it's, you know, he's retreated, he's redeemed something. The Karmapa died of cancer, too, so maybe it's okay, you know. But anyway, at that time, it was kind of like people said, this is not good. How come a Zen master dies of cancer? Don't they just sort of like announce to their disciples, you know, when they're of perfect health and then just snap out? That isn't what happened with him. But the way he handled it, there was no sense. I didn't feel, you know, there was any doubt of Dharma when he handled it. he didn't blame himself, he didn't criticize himself, he just said, this is my karma. And he said, my karma's not so good. It's good to be human, it's good to practice human, but it wasn't, you know, he didn't get to live a long time and he had a lot of suffering.

[75:28]

So that was his evaluation of his karma. Not so good, but the way he handled it was very, very good. So you can handle difficult... pack difficult things, but if you reject them and think that they're coming randomly, that's not true, because we live in probably a random universe, there's signs of that, that the universe isn't actually organized according to our sense of order. We keep trying to project that out there, you know, like Newton and stuff. There is some order out there, which we make up, which we put out there in the conventional world, but It looks like there may not be order up there. There may be a random situation, but random doesn't mean bad. It just means not organized according to some ordered system. But we make order with words. We created order universe, and because we create order out of words, our suffering has order. It's orderly how we suffer and how we become free of suffering.

[76:33]

Because we put ourselves into bondage and suffering in an orderly fashion, we are liberated in an orderly fashion. Not because things are really orderly, but in the realm of misery things are orderly. Our suffering is very nicely ordered around a self, a self which does karma, which thinks it can do things, and so on. Very orderly. And therefore, if you recognize that orderliness, and accept it, the principles of it, and use the principles of it to tune into the order of it, you could become liberated. But one of the principles is not that you talk about other people's faults. That's part of the orderliness of misery, to think about other people's faults. That's a distraction from the pivot that's on yourself. Your liberation is not going to happen on other people looking at themselves, although it does help. You've got to do your own work, which is to recognize that if you think something's bad, there's an orderliness about that.

[77:39]

Some people really like to be touched, others don't. Some people like to be touched by this person, other people don't. Some people like to be touched by this person and not by that person. Some people it's the reverse, right? But that's because of their background. Some people, when they meet an alcoholic, they're attracted to him strongly because their dad was an alcoholic. And their grandfather was an alcoholic. Their mother was attracted to their dad because her father, you know. And then your mother was attracted to alcoholics. Your father was an alcoholic. So you're attracted to alcoholics. You marry one, then you divorce him because you have trouble living with alcoholics. And then you go walking around, you see another alcoholic, and he's just so attractive. How come? Because of the way our mind works. So by recognizing this pattern, you tune into the way your mind works. When you do, you tune into yourself, and you tune into yourself, you're being liberated from it.

[78:44]

But this is tough when you come to babies, you know, babies born into an abusive family. It's very tough to think about this. And this teaching could be used in such a way as to hurt somebody if you don't apply it very skillfully. It could hurt you a lot. It could hurt the baby a lot. You don't go up to somebody who's in hell and say, You're in hell because of your past karma. You don't do that. Almost never do you do that. There's almost no examples of that. I say almost no because I have never seen any examples of where a Buddhist teacher, a sane Buddhist teacher like a Buddha or one of the major teachers has gone up to somebody who's in a tough time and said, you're in this situation because of the bad karma you did. That isn't what they do. What they do is they go and take care of the person and express love to the person. And when the person is encouraged by that love, they do more and more until the person can feel that they're in heaven or, you know, sort of in the human world again.

[79:47]

Then, when the person is back in the human world and suffering is not so terrible, then they sort of say, you know, you're in this good situation because you appreciated the kindness which those people gave to you when you were in hell. Remember how you said thank you? When they did that for you, remember how you said how grateful you were? Remember how you did this and that when they did those kind things to you? Remember how you expressed that and you really meant it? That's how you got to be in this present situation. Now, now let's look at the fact of what's causing suffering and so on. Now they're ready to hear that. Now they have a relatively, they're on the right track. of appreciating good and appreciating the problem with evil. That's when you teach that stuff. Also, you wait before they go to heaven, because when they're in heaven they say, I'm too busy. Did I deal with that enough? Or do you want to go into that more? Yes.

[80:48]

Yes. Yeah, I'm not sure if I understood really what Linda's question was about victims, but when you started to talk about a child, they've run into an infuse of family, that's what I was thinking of, is that aren't there rape victims, aren't there children that really were infuse? I mean, it seems like a danger of thinking, well, that these things happen, but... Yeah, so again, you look at somebody who's being abused or has been abused, okay? This teaching is not to be applied. I shouldn't say not to be applied, but generally speaking, I have not heard of it being applied in a helpful way by applying it to look at that person and think, oh, this person's suffering because of what they did wrong. This is not how I've heard of applying that. I've heard of applying it to myself. When I'm suffering, when I'm in hell, when I'm being abused, Then I apply it to myself so that I don't punch those people back in the face who are punching me.

[81:54]

Because if I punch them back in the face, they'll just get bigger. Like Martin Luther King, I said, you know. He had an application for a gun license, and he had armed bodyguards, and he has guns in his basement, and then his house got blown up, and he got the picture. Then he said, oh, I see, the violence isn't gonna work, because if you use violence, it's gonna come back at you bigger. So, you apply it to myself, if people are being cruel to me, hmm, what could I have done that caused me to be in a situation like this? So the first story that attracted me to Zen was the one about Hakuin. Hakuin, nice old Hakuin, was being abused. People were coming to him. He didn't do anything wrong. People were coming to him and spitting in his face and calling him bad names and accusing him falsely of something. Is this abuse? Is that real abuse? Is that real abuse? What would they have to have done to him for you to say, that's real abuse?

[82:59]

For you to say it's real abuse, then you could say, Hakuin, this is because some bad crime he did in Fast Life. You could say that. But anyway, what did Hakuin think? Did he think it was abuse? We don't know what he thought, but it looks like he didn't know what it was. It looks like he was kind of going, hmm, is that so? Like, is this because of my past karma? What did I do to get this? How did this happen to count? Hmm. And then, when he was praised, what looked like real praise, he goes, hmm, how did this happen? It isn't that there was real praise and real attack, but rather that, I'm not saying it was or wasn't. It looks like it was. But his attitude was one of study-dependent co-arising. And as a result of saying, and then, not only that, but when he was attacked, and he said, well, is that so? And when they gave him the baby, he took care of it. He didn't say, is that so? I'm not going to take care of the baby. He didn't say, is that so? And then punch him. He didn't say, is that so? And say, you people are liars.

[84:01]

He didn't say, is that so? And say, that girl's a liar. He just said, is that so? And then he took care of the baby. And then they came and... praised him, and he didn't say, I told you so. He said, is that so? That's how to apply that teaching. Do you have some questions? Well, he was a pretty developed person. Yeah, pretty. So what about an innocent child who maybe doesn't, you know, would just think this is, you know, take on some feeling? What about an innocent child? Yeah. So they don't have much of a chance, do they? What chance does an innocent child have? Hmm? Well, they have some chance. What is the chance that they have? They're certainly not going to be able to say, well, is that so? Or, you know, how did this happen? Or what's the dharma of this? They aren't going to be able to do that. They also, when you treat children kindly, they aren't going to be able to do that either, probably. Oh, they have a little better chance. A little better chance.

[85:03]

Maybe a lot better chance. What chance does the child who's being abused have? Someone helping you. Someone helping you. That's what they have. So Sabrina was born in this world, big... Nothing she could do about it. She was totally overwhelmed. She was almost going to give up. So some people came and helped her. Now she's kind of up for it. She seems to be digging it a little bit. It's kind of like, okay, I'll give it a try here. I'll try to at least walk her, talk to people, and say, hello, Sabrina. Hello. She's coming along with the program now. And pretty soon, Sabrina will be able to receive Buddhist teaching. But when she was first born, she couldn't, like, figure out how to deal with this, being born with all these afflictions and harassments. She was having a hard time, wasn't she? Real hard time. She's like, check out, maybe so. This is really, you know, I don't know, this is so hard.

[86:05]

But these people are loving me so much, I'm okay, okay, I'll hang around a little longer. That's what you can do for these people. To blame them, to spend any time thinking, now what did Sabrina do to get there? That's a waste of time. It's a distraction. Just love her. Love, love, love. You know, make her comfortable as possible under very difficult circumstances. And then with the combination of making things a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more interesting, and lots of love, the person will grow up. And maybe there'll be a time when they can sit with their legs crossed for a little while. I think she'd probably be able to do that. She'd... And feel her pain, you know? And listen to the Dharma. And then hear this teaching and apply it to herself. But now she can't. So we have to help her. And not waste our time talking about her problems, but talking about what led me to be lazy in helping her. How come I'm lazy? What caused that?

[87:07]

That's my job. Here, another one. Yeah, well, you know, it seems like the chance that kids, the children have is if there's something in them that leads them to seek help, right? You know, if they go and confess and tell what's happened, then maybe they're to the right confessor. Then there'll be someone there who can take them out of the situation or, you know, protect them. Yes. But they don't have, yeah, that would be great. And ones that don't. But the ones that don't, they're suffering. So even though you don't know what the problem is, you can still go help them. It may take them a long time to be able to surface what it is that's bothering you. That's part of, that will maybe come out in the process of whether they feel safe enough to talk. But you don't have to, you don't have to know what the problem is to see if somebody's suffering. Sometimes you do. But oftentimes we have a fairly good sense of whether somebody's suffering. One of the ways you can tell a person's suffering is, if it's a person, you can tell because they have a face.

[88:08]

And they may or may not have eyes, but they usually often have eyes, and you can tell that they're suffering because they have eyes. Now, people who don't have eyes, you can tell that they're suffering because they don't have eyes. So by the nature of being a human being, you know for sure they're suffering. And even if they're a modified standard form, you know, like if they're missing an arm or something, they can't walk, or they can't talk, or they're blind, or they have no hair, even those people, you can be sure that they're suffering. So you don't have to wait to find out what the problem is. You can just right away administer kindness to them because they're suffering. For sure, because they're human. So just go right ahead. And then in the process of being kind, they may be able to reveal to themselves and to some others what the problem is. But they're fairly unlikely to reveal it before they feel some encouragement. Some people have already been encouraged enough to reveal it.

[89:13]

It's nice. Some people, you know, right here. But basically, that's what you do, is you know that all human beings are suffering because of the way they're built, because they're built like you, and you know you're suffering, so just be kind to everybody. Isn't that simple? But hard, especially when they're spitting in your face. Then again, when they're spitting in your face, you say, now, what's this about? Oh, I remember, it's about being kind to people. That's it. Yes? There was a time when you had your hand raised. Yeah, there was a time. I'm okay. It was just the process and you got to it. It happened, okay. It happened. All right. Well, it's, you know, it's the bitching hour. It's the time that the kitchen leaves. So, what can I say? I have something to say. I would say, concerning Buddha Dharma, there are quite a few things about

[90:18]

untold number of categories and teachings which I have not yet understood. However, I do have the extreme joy of studying Dharma with you, which I have had extreme joy of studying Dharma with you all this practice period. And I will continue. And particularly had lots of fun studying and teaching with Norman this time. It's been really fun for me to do that. So, thank you very much.

[90:55]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.76