Sometimes, some people speak of the path of the Buddha, the Buddhadharma, as a religion of analysis. And in this class, in a sense, we've been looking at an analysis of karma. But at the end of class, a couple of people asked me, and I think maybe during class some people asked me too, how does this analysis relate to what some people are doing in so-called sitting meditation or walking meditation? And I think what that means is that quite a few people in this class actually, when they practice sitting meditation,

[01:06]

have not been practicing analysis but have been practicing a type of mental training wherein one gives up thinking while sitting, gives up discursive thought, which would include the special form of discursive thought, which is analysis. Analysis is a kind of thinking. so um so you can you can go right ahead and spend a good deal of time if you can on sitting quietly sitting in non-discursive silence and training your attention to non-discursive silence this is a very beneficial

[02:07]

yoga practice. But Buddhism, the Buddha way anyway, as a unique tradition, is not defined so much by this type of tranquility practice because lots of other traditions also practice giving up discursive thought as a mode of realizing tranquility and clarity buoyancy, relaxation, and so on, a body and mind. But that is part of the practice usually. And it actually is kind of a, you could say, kind of like a prerequisite of being able to really effectively practice analysis if you wish to practice it. But the practice of giving up discursive thought you will find in

[03:09]

a number of traditions, some of which aren't even religious, or not even said to be a religion, like traditional carpentry or dance. Musical training also often involves, at a certain point, giving up discursive thought. So part of your practice, your meditation practice, could be that tranquility type. And tranquility when it's attained then is a very good state in which to practice analysis. Being tranquil means that any kind of wholesome activity, any kind of skillful endeavor which occurred to you that you wish to practice, you would be able to practice quite easily in a state of tranquility and concentration. But in this class we've mostly been studying karma, studying analysis of karma.

[04:11]

It's an exercise in intention directed towards analyzing and studying intention. And we've been talking about analyzing karma, and so karma is one of the basic types of analysis. There's other kinds of analysis. Karmic analysis is perhaps the most basic type of analysis in the teaching of the Buddha. There are other kinds of analysis, though. And so that means analyzing, looking at intention. in terms of whether it's skillful, unskillful, or indeterminate.

[05:17]

Sometimes people say good, but I think actually skillful is a better translation of the word kushala for skillful and akushala for unskillful. And skillful means skillful at what you wish, and if you wish to have benefit and non-harming and developing what is advantageous on the path of enlightenment, then those types of intention which lead to benefit, protection of life, non-harming, and advantages on the path, those would be the skillful intentions. And those that lead to harm, unbeneficial and disadvantageous results or consequences, those would be the

[06:36]

unskillful and again karma intention the debt karma which consists of intention intentional activity is activity that has consequence so the consequences are beneficial or unbeneficial The, so, yeah, so this is a moral analysis. It's an ethical analysis and ethical in terms of, and defined by, its consequences. Yes. Can the intention to be skillful and result nonetheless not good?

[07:40]

You mean unbeneficial? I hate to say no, but I would just say that If you think you're doing something skillfully, if you wish to do something that would be beneficial and it turns out to be not beneficial, I think it's somewhat more beneficial that you were intending to be beneficial and it wasn't than if you wished to be unbeneficial and it wasn't. I think usually if you're trying to do something, if you're trying to protect someone and not harm someone, and you turn out to harm them, the harm is different, slightly different, if you didn't wish to harm.

[08:55]

But if you actually try not to harm and you do, that is unskillful in terms of not harming. So the karma, the intention is not something in and of itself. Its result, its consequence influences the meaning of what perhaps was originally, literally, a good intention. But once the unfortunate, harmful thing results, then that influences the karma. So karma is not a fixed thing in itself. Intention is not a fixed thing. It echoes in the consequence, and it also echoes in its past. And it's echoed by the consequence and echoed by the past.

[09:57]

It's not an independent thing. So let me say this basic, very simple teaching. Sometimes one translation would be practice all good, avoid all evil, purify the mind. This is the teaching of all Buddhas. Okay? And one way of hearing that would be practice good Avoid evil means to develop good in the world, make more good, and eliminate evil. That's one way you might see that. Does that make sense? But the way I would... But I have a criticism of that because...

[11:00]

Well, two criticisms. One is that when you have good, it kind of constellates evil. But when you have skillful, you can't really have skillful without unskillful. So to just keep making good bigger and bigger, the good that is paired with unskillful or evil, to try to make that bigger and eliminate the other, in some sense, is kind of nonsense. And I'm not saying, well, we're trying to promote evil, but we're actually trying to promote good, yes, and avoid evil. But the real point of this practice of the Buddhas is not to make more and more good, exactly, and less and less evil, but to wake up perfectly, to be liberated from good and evil. Otherwise, we have a long-term kind of endless process of forever.

[12:08]

Not forever, but sort of an endless process of being careful to do good and try to avoid evil. We never get out of it. We're already in that realm where some of the time, since we were children, we remember we were sometimes trying to do good and avoid evil, trying to get through the day doing good and avoiding evil and we had some hard times doing that and other people around us were having hard times doing it it's a struggle to live in the world of doing good and avoiding evil and uh... but still it's recommended to practice good and avoid evil but the real point of it is that this is to clarify the mind and realize the teaching of all Buddhas. In other words, become free of all dualities, including good and evil. And all the work that we have to go through, which is rather tiring and painful, of working with all these dualities, with their contradictions and mutuality and inescapability of their opposites and stuff like that.

[13:23]

But if you practice all good, you have to pay attention to your intention. It requires attention to intention to practice good. As I mentioned before, it doesn't happen by accident. Because accidental or a good thing done unintentionally is not karmically, it's not karma. So like again, if I was at the doctor's office and the doctor tapped my knee and my knee and the knee reflex went off and I kicked over a lamp so the lights went off and somebody was awakened by that lights going off or if somebody was going to come in and hurt the doctor but when my knee kicked the lamp it knocked him out so he couldn't hurt the doctor and so he was saved from the evil deed and the doctor was protected and I got in the newspaper for saving the doctor and so on.

[14:28]

That wouldn't be karma for me. It wouldn't be evolutionary. So to do things skillfully, as karmic skillful, like salivating skillfully doesn't count. Your knee-jerk reaction, a skillful knee-jerk reaction isn't karma. It doesn't influence. It's not moral. doesn't have evolutionary power. So to do good means to have good intention, and not only that, but have good results, beneficial results. So you're paying attention to your intention. Say, well, this is a good intention. I want to do good. And then you also watch the consequences. You have to pay attention to that process. And then you see, oh, I intended to do good, but I wasn't paying attention while I was intending to do good. So they often use the example of the guy who walked by the lake one time or a pond. He saw this fish lying by the side.

[15:33]

He wanted to help the fish, so he put the fish back in the water. But this fish was a murderous fish, and this fish ate all the other fish in the pond. He had been taken out of the pond to protect the other fish. So the fish was put back in, killed all the other fish, and then the fish was pulled out and the fish was killed anyway. Plus the man was beat up when people found out that he was the one who threw that murderer back into the lake. He intended to do good, but he wasn't careful about how he did it. So the consequence was pretty much bad for all the fish, including the one he put back, plus himself, plus the people who beat him up. It was really kind of a tragedy. so doing good means not just that you intend to do good but that it has you look at the intention and you learn from the intention such that you intend to do good and you get good consequence requires attention to intention but the main point is not to get the good not to get the good consequence the main point is to develop your attention and your awareness of how karma works same with evil it's not that we're trying to eliminate evil

[16:51]

But avoiding it requires attention. So both avoiding evil and practicing good require attention. When this attention develops and develops by avoiding evil and practicing good, your mind becomes clear. And as your mind becomes clear, awakening is unobstructed. So that's the way I would interpret this. It's not that we're trying to get huge mass of good. However, a huge mass of good does develop in this process, but the huge mass of good that develops from getting really good at good and getting good at avoiding evil, the huge mass of good, the point of the huge mass of good is to go with the huge mass of wisdom that's developing along while you're developing the mass of good. It's a combination of the good together with the wisdom. So the good is we are trying to make a huge lot of good, but along with the good is a lot of wisdom.

[18:01]

The wisdom comes from studying You don't really get any good by avoiding evil necessarily, but you develop wisdom. So that's the basic idea. And then you don't have to be watching all the time this dualistic thing. You're awakened to see that there's not really a duality there. You're released from this struggle. Okay. So I see a lot of hands already. Shall I call on them? You want me to? Whatever? Any other? What are the other hands? One? Just one? Okay. Maybe it'll be all right. If one has the intention and the action of being aware, immediately aware of correcting one's actions, is it necessary to have a good intention on top of that?

[19:04]

Or can one trust that being oneself and being totally aware, being connected, that is good. That is enough. I didn't quite follow your question. You started out by saying correcting something. Yeah. You spoke last week about... If you're aware of your actions, then you know. It's like driving down the road. If you're aware of your driving, you might go this way or that, but you can make corrections. Yes. But if you're not aware, you might just fall asleep and go off the road. Yes. That's my analogy. Yes. Is cultivating a life of total awareness sufficient for being and doing good? Or does it require, in addition to that, an intention to do good, Did you say cultivating a life of total awareness? Yeah. If one is aware all the time of one's actions, can one trust that one's nature is good anyway?

[20:06]

And so if you're totally aware of that, you will naturally be and do good. Well, kindness is required an additional action to that intention to be good all the time. In a way, you could start just by, what do you call it, just by trying to develop total awareness. Is that what you said? Yes. Yeah. And then you trust that one's actions will be good. Well, that's fine, but you just sort of got yourself back into practicing good by what you just said. You could take away the second part about trusting that you'll be good, but if you add it back in, I think you're back in the thing of trying to practice in good. But you could take away the second part and just try to practice total awareness. Now, if you try to practice total awareness, how are you going to do that? Well, you're going to do it by paying attention. As you start to pay attention, even if you don't call that practicing good, in fact, that's what's required. You're doing what's required for practicing good, but you don't have to say you're practicing good. You can just try to pay attention.

[21:06]

And if you pay attention, you will notice, probably, oh, when I drive like this, I get traffic tickets. I get in accidents. People scream at me. Children are frightened. Other people copy my bad habits, make people angry. You see that. So you see, oh, this kind of the tension, this type of intention leads to these consequences. And you might think, so that kind of awareness, you might naturally evolve towards changing the way you drive such that it's more comfortable and beings are more protected. And also so that you can, you know, if you drive with attention, the driving maybe becomes more comfortable, but also as it becomes more skillful and comfortable, you also maybe can pay attention better. you know because skillful driving in some sense is easier to pay attention to once you get in the groove it's kind of like easier it's kind of hard to pay attention when you're driving really badly now of course you can drive again if so if you drive really really fast it's hard to pay attention well enough so then you'd notice well i probably shouldn't drive that fast until i get more skillful like some people can drive really fast and they're so concentrated

[22:26]

that they can drive really fast and not have an accident. But then again, you want to do that in a place where it doesn't endanger other people, right? So maybe go out in the middle of, I don't know what, there's a movie out now called, what's it called? It's about a motorcycle anyway. Nope. The world fastest, yeah, but this guy's driving an Indian, right, motorcycle. But he does this on the sort of Bonneville salt flats, right, where there's no other cars, so he's not going to hurt anybody. But if you're speeding on the street and somebody pulls out in front of you, there's nothing you can do, you know, really. So you don't want to be driving really, really fast where you can hurt other people. So in a way, you wouldn't have to have the idea of avoid evil and practice all good if you just practice total awareness because the point of it is that. However, I want to contradict myself now by saying that actually practicing good does accumulate good

[23:34]

which is a good in itself. But the point of that is still not to have this big mass of good, but to have the mass of good so that you can realize enlightenment. Enlightenment requires this mass of good which develops skill and wisdom. But you need both the wisdom and the things. So it's not about eliminating evil, it's about developing good through avoiding evil and practicing good. So you could possibly go that way. And sometimes I ask people, what is your intention? You know, particularly what is your, if you can find your ultimate intention, your ultimate intention, your final or highest intention in your life. And they often can't tell me. And sometimes they tell me something which, you know, somebody might not think was that great an intention. But I still accept that and work with that because I feel like if that person and me look at that intention, whatever it is, it will evolve positively.

[24:39]

That's why my basic principle is even if your intention was not so skillful, or even unskillful, if you pay attention to it, the intention will evolve positively. That's the thing. But you wouldn't even have to call it good or bad for it to evolve towards more and more skillful vis-a-vis enlightenment. The terms good and bad is labels. Well, skillful... But I guess... What I hear you saying is that the more one's aware, the more one sees the consequences of one's actions and says, oh, well, I better change that, then the more one is in line with having the consequences be good, and that's automatically good. Yes, but also a consequence of your action also includes that you intended one thing and got another. or that you want this and you do something and you see that this intention going with this, you have this intention for your life and you have this current intention which leads to something antithetical to your basic intention.

[25:50]

You want to be happy and you're doing things which are making you unhappy. So you see that. And so you see one intention, this very deep intention to be beneficial and peaceful, and you see this current intention, which doesn't look too bad, but then you see the consequences are antithetical. So then that transforms into later intentions. which then starts to gradually line up to your deep intention, which I think we all do have this basic intention. We really do like peace, and we really do like to be close to everybody. We really do want to work towards that. Yes. Yes. Tell me your name again. Charlie. Is paying attention required in terms of thought? No, it doesn't. But But analyzing the quality of your intention does require discursive thought, I think.

[26:51]

Yeah, and also to watch the action and see the consequence and relate the consequence to the action. This is discourse, which means going back and forth. So you say, I intended to do this And then I got this result, which is not what I intended, or even I wish, I want to be this kind of person, but right now I notice that I'm resisting the kind of intention which goes with that. So, you know, I honestly admit that right now I'm not feeling generous, even though basically I don't feel good about not being generous. I want to be generous, but right now I'm feeling not generous. But that's, you know... That's what I observe. It's a kind of not generous intention. So there's some going back and forth there in comparing and analysis. So analysis, part of meditation requires discursive thought, and another type of meditation, the tranquility type, involves giving it up for a while, consistently for long enough, so that you create this concentrated, flexible meditation.

[28:09]

clear state of mind then in that clarity and concentration you're ready to like do analysis use discursive thought for various purposes one of them being to analyze the karma which is this process which is responsible for ignorance and suffering just being tranquil the Buddha practiced concentration but that wasn't sufficient for him to solve the problem of karma. He had to do quite a bit of discursive analysis to see how the process worked and how it could be reversed. But he did that in a state of concentration. So the mind has these two basic functions. of giving up discursive thought and calming down and using discursive thought and developing penetrating wisdom, we need to use both. You can't really develop wisdom very well if you're not calm.

[29:16]

However, if you're too calm, you also can develop wisdom. It's possible to get your thought process turned on so far that you can't even do enough analysis to see how karma works and become free of the karmic process. It would be alright to be skillful enough at concentration so that you could become too concentrated. Like the Buddha could get more concentrated than he needed in order to analyze, but he didn't do his analysis in the most profound state of tranquility that he is able to attain. After he was enlightened, however, he went back and played with those very profound states. So after you have wisdom, then you can go back to the tranquility and take the wisdom down into a state of tranquility which is deeper than you can do analysis in. And in that state of profound tranquility, the results of the analysis pervades your being more and more thoroughly.

[30:26]

than you could in a workable state of concentration. That may be too much on that. Let's see. Mark and Sandeep. How about the story of he was talking about goodness and the reaction, and your intention has to be good. If you start a project with a good intention, but then you get tired of it in the middle of it, you negate your karma. But how about the story about the Indian man, you know, the student says, the snake bit me, or fire or whatever, one, two, three times. He says, you don't let it bite you, put it away. And in that sense, he's not being that, you know, he's not being good to the The snake or the spider, he's pushing it away. So how about self-protecting?

[31:29]

Good, good, good, because there's traffic and exterior problems in everyday living. Yes. So he isn't being very good or nice to the snake by showing a way, you know, I don't know if his intention is happy or not, but there's light and dark, and I don't know how that works with him being good to the snake, you know. Well, the Buddha sometimes, there's a few cases where the Buddha was kind of like, you could say, or abrupt or almost gruff with people. You know? But I think in most of those cases it looked like the consequence was good.

[32:31]

And of course there's a lot of Zen stories where the Zen master is like super intense or super fierce. And there's even one Zen story about where a Zen teacher supposedly caught a cat. So it is conceivable that under some circumstances it wouldn't look nice. So we have that, and then we have a problem of what's the result? Is the result beneficial? So we have that problem, you know, like, what is it? Jainism, you know, if you practice Jainism pretty strictly, then you would start to death. because you try not to harm anybody. So in the Buddha Dharma we recognize that there may be some harm in the way we're living. Even vegetarians, even who have organic farms, still in the process of digging the earth, if you're farming, you could hurt animals that are in the ground.

[33:39]

And so Buddhist monks originally did not dig in the earth because they didn't want to hurt But then someone says, but they begged food from people who did farm, so they were kind of complicit in the thing anyway. And I think they would admit that, that we can't escape, if we live for a while, we can't escape being caught in some process which maybe isn't so kind to everybody. So that's kind of a problem for us. But again, we studied that. And I think that's the problem. We study that in order to attain wisdom, which we then can help others to study in this world where there's some harm happening unavoidably until everybody was extremely skillful. So we study, we study, we study, we pay attention, and we see how it works, and we see how we feel when we do something that's harmful.

[34:48]

And then after we see how we feel, we see when intention comes with that feeling, and then we watch how that intention works, how that intention grows, what are the consequences of that. We're always studying this in this karmic analysis. Yes, Sandeep? It's a tricky question about your story of the pond and the fish. Yes. If time is continuous, how do you know something is beneficial or non-beneficial in terms of intention and consequences? How do you actually figure out if consequences are beneficial or not? There are millions of years. So some Roman soldier who killed somebody else, then 30 maybe, whether its consequences are beneficial or not, a million years after the fact.

[35:52]

Well, the way you figure it out is by being enlightened. And the way you get enlightened is not by figuring it out, because you can't figure it out before you're enlightened, but you watch short-term, you watch the process. And if in the short-term you see that you have maybe a short-term benefit you wish to accrue by something, and the short-term you notice it doesn't work, the point is you might be wrong about that. Because, again, karma doesn't have an inherent thing because of the consequences. But you can't see the total pattern of consequence, and Buddha taught, the karmic result happens in three times. And two of the times are beyond your reach right now. So one is within your reach, you can see it in your lifetime, sometimes the next day. And that does count. But there's two other types which are farther away in time and you can't see them.

[36:54]

And only enlightened people can tell us that actually they can see these three types and they can tell us about them backwards and forwards. But the enlightenment comes not from being able to figure this out, because you can't before you have illumination, but it comes through watching what you can see and sharpening your vision by what you can see. And noticing, for example, what you just said, that you don't really, if you think you did figure it out, that's not as clear insight as to realize, I just saw this, but I don't know what the two other consequences of this action will be. But watching carefully develops your vision. As your vision deepens, you will someday be able to say that these actions have consequence in three times. And you would be able to say, according to this tradition, you would be able to say exactly what the causal process of strange things happening are because of certain past pivotal karmas in a person's life or your own.

[38:00]

So prior to that, the teaching of karma in three times is somehow taken as a teaching from the Buddha. I wouldn't say take it on faith and believe it, but rather listen to it and watch and realize you're not going to be able to see this until you yourself have Buddha vision. However, you do understand, well, this is the explanation that the Buddha gave. I don't see it myself, and actually I don't believe it yet. But this is the answer to that story. But I do believe maybe that by studying karma that I think I understand that this is the path or one of the paths that the Buddha taught to enlightenment. Plus it makes sense to me that it would be from what I've seen so far. It seems like people who do watch their intention and the consequences of their intention and you know, that they do get better at it.

[39:05]

And as they get better at it, they seem to become more skillful, by definition, almost, and happier in the short-term effects. And they seem to become wiser, and so on, within this lifetime. I have a follow-up question. Yeah? Excuse me. It isn't that you carry it forward. It has consequence. We don't blame you for the carrying forth of the karma. The karma's, the karma's responsible for suffering and ignorance, not you. I mean, you know, you're responsible too, but it's really the karma that's carried forth. Karma has consequence. Okay?

[40:06]

Just want to adjust that language a little bit. Okay, so you've got the part. Cognition has a pattern of relationship, which is karma. Intention. And that intention the very substantial part that you were referring to before. Right. And then there is the actual intention. But somewhere there are gaps in behavior where you would find, like, for instance, I guess, like, maybe if I just set it as an example. Like, one could have intention of being very kind to human beings and yet never make eye contact with a homeless human being. Right? Yes. Your intentions are very clear. you know who you are, your pattern of cognition about that subject is very clear, but when you actually come across the homeless person, you avoid them. Yes. So I would like to understand more what causes that gap.

[41:11]

Well, one of the things that causes the gap is past moments of avoiding eye contact with suffering people who are making a request of you. Just like I said before, you can have the intention to be generous and then you feel stingy. And feeling stingy, the pattern of relationships such that when you see someone, you don't feel like, hey, this is my baby. You don't feel that way, that pattern of relationship. Arises in your mind because you've had that pattern of relationship in the past with some people But you've also had the pattern of relationship with some people where you did feel like hey, that's my baby I'll give anything to that person No problem to give them everything So then you can that's why I say, you know being in this class is a result of past moments of many past moments of generosity that you can sit here and receive this teaching and is a result of generosity.

[42:15]

But you could also be stingy here in this class, or I could be too. And that's also, generally speaking, conditioned by past moments of stinginess. That's not the only factor, though, because of what sometimes can happen, because this karmic situation is open. It's not closed. It's not deterministic. It's a causal process. So the present is influenced by the future. Just like we said, the quality of this is open because the future hasn't happened yet. So there's an openness in the present due to the fact that it will be made meaningful later. So it's actually influenced by something you haven't done yet. And it's also influenced by the past. And it's also influenced by the environment. If somebody's standing next to you, which is also, who you're hanging out with is also partly the result of your past karma, but it's also a result of their past karma and everybody's past karma.

[43:16]

But sometimes you're with someone who, when you don't look at a homeless person, they say, hey, Sandeep, where are you looking? You know? And that is also a factor that influences you right now. So there's a lot of possibilities here, and the main thing is, the key point is paying attention to this focal point. And as you do, you start to open to see lots of other possibilities coming in to transform and influence the process so that you can kind of jump track sometimes. You can seem to be on a track, you know, like A1, A2, A3, A4, and in between A1 and A2, A1 and A2 aren't karma, let's say. They're feelings or something. And these things aren't determined solely by karma. I read that sutra to you earlier, right? If you have a feeling, it's not just due to karma that you're feeling this way. But karma is one of the effects.

[44:18]

You have another feeling. Karma is one of the conditions for that feeling. But other things could give rise to that feeling too. Karma, however, is the link between the two feelings. So karma doesn't make A1 and make A2 and make A3, although karma is one of the conditions for them. Karma is more like the connector between A1, A2, and A3. And A1 could be stinginess, A2 could be another stinginess, A3 could be another stinginess. The homeless person he sees is a sensation and not necessarily... No, no, I didn't mean that. I meant you could see a homeless person and feel pleasure. But I mean, he's not wishing him harm, so it's not really affecting his karma. I wasn't meaning that. I meant, let's say... you have a positive sensation.

[45:21]

Or let's say you meet someone in the street who's homeless and you feel negative about the person. You don't feel like happy and joyous and warm towards them. That's the kind of feeling you have. Okay? And that's not just due to past karma. But the connection between that feeling and past ones like it, the connection there is karma. But also karma can be the connection between that feeling and feeling generous towards a person. It's also the connector there. It can be the connection between jumping tracks and heading into a whole different pattern. And it is a pattern. And again, the key point is to open the present moment. And the key, the pivotal issue is the intention. The Buddha is pointing to the karma as the thing to look at, to analyze, to learn about.

[46:28]

That will show you that the situation is open because, in fact, your cognition does not arise from itself, although past cognitions are one of the conditions for a cognition. Okay, so earlier this year we had a class on epistemology about the sources of knowledge. And the sources of knowledge are basically a past moment of cognition, but also a dominant condition, which is the sense organ, which is a body that's a sensuous living body. It doesn't mean so much your fingernails or your hair when we say the body. It means your functioning eye organ, your functioning ear organ, your functioning skin, this kind of thing. This sensuous, responsive, feeling body, that body in the world interacting with the world intensely enough, that interaction is cognition.

[47:41]

And that comes with a pattern called karma. So you don't make your interaction with the world. You don't make your body by yourself. The world makes your body, and your body makes the world. And your cognitions arise from the interaction between your body. So your cognitions are not made by themselves, and they're not made by your body. However, your body is a condition for them, but the world's equal condition for your cognitions. And your past cognitions, You get to be there in this life space, in this cognitive experience, which is the relationship between your body and your world. It's your world, too, and your past cognitions. Now we have intention. If you pay studying the intention and seeing how it works, that is the way that you can see that the intention also is something that's working in concert with all other beings.

[48:44]

Just like your cognition arose in the concert between your body and the world, your intention arises from that same concert. Then you start to see that your intention is actually relating to everybody else's body, relating to the world, and relating to everybody else's intention. As you open that up through vision into that space, you start to see the actual nature of intention. And when you see the actual nature of intention you're liberated from the karma problem which is the source of suffering. But all your questions are perfectly relevant to the process of studying. All your questions that you have asked about this are what it's like to study karma. Asking questions about karma are what it's like to study karma. And not just asking them in your head But looking at the tradition, looking at the scriptures, and talking to people who are also interested in this is a way to enact what you're going to find out.

[49:48]

Namely that your karma is not something done by you alone. Even though you're totally involved. You're not doing anything alone. And your intentions are actually patterns of how you're not alone. Your intentions are patterns of how you relate to what's not you. And sometimes they're stingy intentions. That's the pattern. Sometimes they're generous intentions. Sometimes they're fearless intentions. Sometimes they're frightened intentions. And so on. But all those you don't make by yourself. Everybody else cooperates in your negative intentions too. But when you see that, your intentions become more positive. When you see that your negative intentions are negative, plus when you see how everybody else is cooperating with your negative intentions, then the negative intention, or somebody else's negative intention, is a launching pad for a moment of wisdom. To see the nature of a negative karma is as good as to see the nature of a wholesome karma.

[50:55]

Seeing the nature, which is that it's working together with everything, that's what we're That's the enlightenment, which can come through studying and playing with the karma, experimenting with karma. So again, how many times today did you experiment with karma? How many times today did you actually look and experiment with your intention? How many times did you intentionally, experimentally, meditatively, intent. How many times did you play with and experiment with an intention today? If you did some, that's good. If you did none, you missed the day. But it's not too late. There's a few more hours. Does that make sense, Sandip? Yes? Is there any difference between mindfulness, when you're asking that question?

[52:02]

I thought many moment which are mindful, like a lot more. Is there a difference between... Excuse me, I didn't hear your question. Is there a difference between mindful... Between being mindful and then watching your attention. Can I give an example? Well, just a second. I would say you use mindfulness in order to watch your intention. So watching your intention, I think pretty much you need mindfulness to do that. When you're attentive to your intention, mindfulness is operating. Plus another aspect of mindfulness is if you remember, remembering to look at your intention is also mindful. So mindful means remember. The basic meaning of mindfulness is remember. But mindfulness also has other aspects besides remembering what meditation you want to do. Like if remembering you want to meditate on your intention, that's one aspect of mindfulness.

[53:05]

Another aspect of mindfulness is what's called alertness. So remembering your meditation is one. Alertness is another. Alert means you're paying attention to the present example of the thing. You're alert to the present. And ardent is another aspect. In other words, that you're actually warm and zealous and ardent. Yeah, that you're warm about this. You actually have a warm feeling about devoting your energy to this. And another one is discriminating, that you're actually sharp about this. So remembering, discriminating, warm, and alert, all those would be mindfulness applied to intention. Mindfulness is not intention. Mindfulness is not intention, but it could be the intention to be mindful. But then once there's the intention to be mindful, then if you are successful, then you are mindful, and then you turn the mindfulness on the intention.

[54:08]

So we don't really practice mindfulness of mindfulness in this particular course. We want to be mindful of our intention. So mindfulness is not different from observing and analyzing your intention. But it is not the same as intention. But you could have an intention to be mindful of whatever. So if you're mindful of your walking, mindful of your breathing, that's fine, but then take it one more step and be mindful of the intention in your walking. So you can, it's possible, I guess, to be walking non-karmically. I don't know, it's possible. That's okay and pay attention to that too. Be mindful of that too, but particularly be mindful of the intentional walking, the intentional breathing, the intentional speaking. Tune into and use your mindfulness to stay with your intention. Right, so if you're having trouble finding your intention, then mindfulness, when you're watching your feelings and your mind, there are aspects of the mind that would help you find your intention?

[55:19]

Yeah. She said if you're having trouble finding your intention, then with mindfulness of feelings and what else did you say? Mind. What? Mind? The two different aspects of mind that we're watching. Well, there's four foundations of mindfulness. One is body, so generally speaking, being mindful of your body. At first, like be mindful of your posture, and it says be mindful of the posture in the posture. That first aspect of mindfulness is like tranquility. So you need mindfulness to practice tranquility. So mindfulness of your posture, mindfulness of your breathing has to make you calm. Mindfulness of your feeling also, and your feeling in your feeling, your body in your body, your breathing in your breathing. This kind of mindfulness, first of all, helps you calm down. Then, you can move into the next phase, and maybe, perhaps once you're calm, then you can be mindful of your intention. But these other mindfulnesses that you mentioned will help you get warmed up and ready for mindfulness of intention.

[56:21]

And when you become calm, you may have easier time seeing your intention. Just like a lot of people, a lot of people, you know, if you ask them, were you aware any time today of the intention to move? They're moving all day, but they They ask, were you aware of the intention to move? And a lot of people say, well, no. But if then you have the person come and sit down with us and sit in the room with everybody else not moving, then after not too long, most people get in touch with the feeling of wanting to move. Not everybody, but sometimes it becomes very clear and they feel actually the impulse to move perhaps a thousand times in a day. because they're sitting still so much. Does that make sense? Many of you know that, right? But if you don't sit still, the intention to move arises and you move before you even notice it. But if you don't move, it keeps knocking on the door. When are you going to move?

[57:23]

Come on now. Don't you hear the intention to move is there? Yeah, I see it now. There it is. Yeah, it's getting stronger and stronger. So you're studying the intention to move. And sometimes the intention to move is skillful. And sometimes it's not, because sometimes if you do move, it distracts you from the intention to move. So actually when you're sitting, you actually quite naturally sometimes slip into meditating on your karma. And it doesn't again mean that it's unwholesome to think, have the intention to move when you're sitting. It might be quite skillful. You could see. And you could have the intention to move, and it could be skillful, and then you could also not move, and that can be skillful too. But meantime, your vision is improving while you're watching these intentions. That make sense? Yes. And then in mindfulness of mind, where does intention come in there? Well, mindfulness of mind actually would be, so they have mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feeling, and mindfulness of mind.

[58:34]

Mindfulness of mind would actually be a place where you could start meditating on intention. Because if you look at the examples under the third foundations of mindfulness, mindfulness of mind, the example there is often, is it an unwholesome state of mind? So actually they use, at that phase, they start meditating on karma. Karmic analysis starts in the third foundation of mindfulness. And the fourth one actually gets into more subtleties of it, actually. And it's not intention? The fourth one is not intention? The fourth one is called mind objects, and included in mind objects is intention. Yes. But also under the object called mind, you could also... Under the thing of mindfulness of mind, you can be, for example, they use examples of be aware that the mind is agitated, be aware that the mind is calm, be aware that the mind is heavy, be aware that the mind is light, be aware that the mind is wholesome, unwholesome.

[59:41]

So as an example of the kind of qualities of mind you can be aware of, some of the examples are examples of attention. But it's other things, too, that you're aware of at that point. Then when you move on to the next level of mindfulness, there's various examples of various problems you run into in trying to do the previous three. So those are also there. But also under that heading you'll find more analysis of intention and karma under the fourth category too. So under the third and fourth foundations of mindfulness or frames of mindfulness, you will find a little bit in both cases on intention or karma. In this class we're focusing on that point. And mindfulness is necessary in order to meditate on intention. Mindfulness is necessary for intention to evolve steadily onward and upward.

[60:42]

Morgan? So when you are in the moment and you are being mindful and you are in an action and you are questioning or trying to decide if it's skillful or unskillful of your next action, how do you know because you are in it? Well, it relates to what Sandeep said. You don't really know. You don't really know if it's wholesome. If you think it's not, it usually isn't. If you think it's going to be harmful, it usually is, but not always. So if you think it's unwholesome, those are normally things that you would confess, you know, internally and interpersonally. And if you ever confess something you thought was unskillful to a fellow practitioner or teacher, they might sometimes say, oh no, that was actually really skillful, that intention.

[61:54]

They might say that. And you go, wow, you know, or whatever, you know. That would be like, hmm, how so, you know. So, it isn't so much that you, but still, and that's not conclusive. It's just part of the dynamic analysis of your state. Now if you think it's wholesome, those are also good things to tell somebody. So there's a lot of unwholesome things we might think of doing that we don't do, and you don't necessarily have to talk to anybody about that. The unwholesome things we do do, sometimes it helps to tell somebody. But even I sometimes suggest to people, any major good things you want to do, discuss that with your teacher. Because sometimes a major good thing is done in a state of major darkness.

[62:56]

Like someone might think, oh, I think it would really be nice if I had a sexual relationship with this person. because they're like the most wonderful person in the world. There's no problem that they're married to somebody else. It's somehow just so glorious and magnificent that this couldn't possibly be anything but good. But I promised to talk over these major things, and that's one of them that you do in your life. So I would talk to my teacher about it, and the teacher goes, you know, well, actually, I don't think that's a good idea because... I think it would be harmful to that person's spouse and children for you to have that relationship with them. You go, oh yeah, but no, no, blah, blah, you know. You maybe find out, and the teacher says, you know, I'm really surprised that you don't see that this could be harmful. And so you go, boy, this is really a stupid teacher. They just don't see clearly. But again, you should be committed to to discussing getting help looking at your karma because, again, it's part of realizing that your karma is not something you're doing by yourself, but your karma is a pattern of relationship which is related to all other beings.

[64:13]

So the main point is you look. And if you have a question, talk to friends, Dharma friends about it. And if you think it's perfect, also talk to somebody if you're absolutely sure. But still, sometimes you think something's good and you really don't have time to talk to someone because you think it's good and it has to be done now, so you do that. So then you watch how that works and see if it does turn out well. And if it doesn't, again, it doesn't mean that's for sure that it isn't good, but you just keep watching. And you see, well, the short-term effect was not good anyway. Maybe the long term will be, but the short term wasn't. The short term was, it seems I feel bad in the short term, and everybody around me feels bad. I think it was mean, and everybody else thinks it was mean. Maybe in the long run it'll be good, because again, somebody be really mean, and everybody realizing how mean they were could be conducive to enlightenment. Seeing how bad a bad thing is, and feeling bad about it,

[65:17]

The Buddha has said this is part of the process of dharma developing. So it's not totally bad to do a bad thing that has a bad consequence if you see it and feel bad about doing a bad thing which has a bad consequence. That is good. Did that make sense? Yeah, that was my question. Okay. Well, okay. What I was saying was, if you do something which you thought was bad, and you feel bad about it, and everybody else feels bad about it, okay, everybody feeling bad about this bad thing is good. And the Dharma goes forward. when you feel that way. So this is one place the Buddha says this is where he's talking to this, at the end of the scripture the Buddha's talking to this guy who didn't realize he was talking to the Buddha.

[66:23]

This was a disciple of Buddha who didn't know he was talking to Buddha. At the beginning of the scripture he thought he was talking to just another monk. And he was not terribly respectful. He wasn't rude, but he he wasn't really respectful to the extent that he would have been if he knew that he was with his teacher. He wanted to be a student of the Buddha. And the Buddha, because he wanted to be a student of the Buddha, the Buddha went to meet him. And they spent the evening together and the night together and this guy was, you know, not very, he didn't follow the usual mode of decorum that one does when meeting Shakyamuni Buddha. And he wanted to, And he would have if he knew, but he didn't. So he apologized in the end for treating him a little too casually. And the Buddha said, yeah, that was kind of a mistake. But since you recognized it and kind of don't want to act that way and are acting that way now, that's part of the Dharma wheel turning.

[67:27]

Were there some hands raised I didn't see? Yes? Alison? So I think that this idea that the more reflective you are, the more likely you are to do well, that seems intuitively very appealing. But it also seems like when you look around the world sometimes, you see people who are tremendously self-conscious, always analyzing their own motives, always trying to figure out whether they're doing the right thing or they're not doing the right thing, or what the consequences are going to be. And then you see other people, and they end up not doing things that seem to be good and still cool. And then you see other people who seem to have a net for just intuitively going out in the world and acting, and then good consequences come from it. Well, in the former case, I don't know too many examples of the former case where the person you're describing is tranquil. I know a lot of people like that, but they're agitated and anxious. something they can't see very clearly, and that impedes their vision in their analysis.

[68:38]

So their analysis is good, but it would work much better for them, and I think their intentions would become more skillful and their vision would...their vision and intentions come up together. As the intention gets more skillful, the vision gets more skillful. As the vision gets more skillful, the intention gets more skillful. But for the vision to operate on the intention in such a way that it can learn and the intention can evolve and the vision with it, or the cognition with it, it usually needs quite a bit of tranquility, because this whole process is somewhat, you know, it's kind of, it's a very dangerous situation. You're looking at your intention, which has consequence. So if you're not relaxed with it, it's hard to see how it's going. So that's my experience. And some people are very conscientious, but they're not as effective as they would be if they were calmly and flexibly and and concentratedly conscientious. And the other example of some person who you say is intuitive and what's that?

[69:40]

You see people who seem to always do good things and do the right thing in a very sort of spontaneous, intuitive, and apparently unreflective way. Yeah, well, I... Again, my experience with people like that is that they seem unreflective because they're so skillful at reflecting. It's like some dancers make it look easy. Some piano players make it look easy. But they've trained so long that they're relaxed. Well, first of all, they're relaxed, and then they reflect, and then the relaxation and the reflection become so natural. And it still could be intuitive, but there is reflection. As Mozart said, music is calculating without knowing it. So he's doing all these mathematical calculations, but it just seems like a You don't see the reflection, but he was gifted to be able to do the reflection in a way that looked very relaxed from an early age, whereas most of us would have to look kind of self-conscious for quite a long time before we get to that point.

[70:50]

I think he was hardworking and relaxed at the same time. So that's what I would think. Because the Buddha, most of these great people who seem to be spontaneously doing all this skillful stuff, and the stories of Zen that attracted me were not stories where the story is told that someone comes up to the guy and insults him for something he didn't do. And then he responds in a very relaxed and easy way. And then someone comes up to him and praises him in a relaxed, easy way, basically the same in both cases. I didn't have the feeling this guy was calculating his intention. but that he had had a long training which led him to kind of immediately respond in such a balanced way under all circumstances of coming back non-violently, non-self-protectively, and happy to assist people even while he was being attacked unjustifiably and also when he was praised justifiably.

[72:00]

Just the same practice all the time. I didn't have the impression awkwardly, in a self-conscious way, doing these calculations of his intention. But I think that was a result of long years. I also know this guy. At the time I read the story, I didn't know this guy's childhood and early training. He had some real hard times. And Shakyamuni Buddha had some hard times, you know. In his thoroughness, when he got off track, he got way off track. So in the biographies of most people who get to that point, you realize there was a training phase when they weren't so smooth and at ease. But, you know, maybe there's somebody who somehow does the right thing without any self-reflection. I just never heard of such a person. And again, the founder of the tradition was not a person like that. He was a person who in his final life as the Buddha, prior to being the Buddha, before he woke up, he actually had some embarrassing thoughts.

[73:09]

And he looked at them and noticed them and was embarrassed. You know, he had intentions to avoid suffering people. Our Buddha did. Our Buddha said, you know, when he was a young man, he kind of had aversion to some people, some of these homeless people. Our Buddha, can you imagine? Just a few weeks or a few years before being the Buddha, our Buddha, like a decade, not even a decade before being the Buddha, our Buddha was like, kind of like, yee, yucky, oh, homeless people. You know, ooh, sick people, you. Ooh, old people, yeah. Our Buddha, can you imagine that he was like us? Like we sometimes go, you know, ooh, how disgusting, how gross, ugh, rather than something else. Like, what can I do for you? How can I give service? That's more like we expect our Buddha to do, and that's what he wanted to do.

[74:12]

But he wasn't that way sometimes, and he was embarrassed and ashamed because it was ridiculous. You know, he said, I'm going to be like that pretty soon myself. Why would I have aversion to it? It's so silly, you know. So even he had some moments when everything wasn't really smooth and so on. But then after he was Buddha, then he was like, whatever, man. He was totally cool all the time. You know, everything was like right on the mark. But even though he was totally cool, still it didn't work for everybody. But after that, there was no more problems for him. He was the Buddha. And I don't know if they suppress the bad stories, but there's no bad stories of Buddha I ever heard of, all cool. But before Buddha, he was like us, sometimes cool and sometimes not. But he wasn't just not cool, he noticed it. He noticed it and he was ashamed because he didn't want to be not cool.

[75:16]

He didn't want to like go yuck to living, suffering people. He didn't want to be that way. He was like into compassion, and sometimes he wasn't. I mean, he was devoted to compassion for innumerable lifetimes. And in his final Buddha lifetime, he still had problems. So, but you can get to a point where you don't have anymore, where you get really skillful, and it looks like, just do the right thing all the time. We can get that way, and you may be seeing some people who look like that, and it's wonderful. And I've heard of people like this too, and it's just wonderful to hear these stories. And when you hear these stories, you say, I want to be like that, right? Of course we do. We do. That's what attracts us, is these stories of these people who get really skillful at compassion. But you need wisdom to be really skillful at compassion. And you need compassion to be really skillful at wisdom. And so some people have. So that's part of what the Buddha teaches.

[76:19]

The Buddha teaches some people have become very wise and skillful. It can be realized. And there's a path of training to realize it. And sometimes on that path it may look real hard. But you need to be calm to do this practice too. So he had a lot of calm in his background. for his wisdom practice. But calm is hard work, too. Before you get calm, a lot of people go to meditation retreats to get calm, but they don't get calm right away. They mostly just want to move and get out of there. Because it's, you know, it's, you know, when you calm down and start to open up to all kinds of stuff like sadness and grief and Fear and anger and all that stuff can come out when you stop distracting yourselves. So settling down is not that easy sometimes.

[77:22]

But over the years, I've seen people who do it and do it, they get more skillful at calming down. They get more skillful at being aware of what they're doing. And the more consistent, the more often, generally speaking, So if you can do it all day long, that's best. If you can do it one minute a day, that's great. But if you can do it many minutes, that's best. But it takes many years to do it many minutes, so you have to be patient, which is another practice. Right? Anything else? So let's devote our mindfulness to watching our intention as much as possible throughout the day, because there's one there every minute.

[78:53]

You don't have to make the intention, you've got it. It's just a question of being mindful of it. It's there to be enjoyed, as Keats said. Forever young and forever to be enjoyed. Every moment there's an intention to be attended to, and the proposal is that attending to it has a positive evolutionary thrust, both in the intention itself and in the cognition which it lives in. Cognition will develop with the development of the intention. and the intention will develop with the development of the cognition, so they help each other.

[79:41]

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