The other morning Carol Carey said something about, she said, did you say, she asked me, did you say that we, I have in my notes that you said that we should not be ethical or we should not be ethical persons or something like that. And I said, well, if I said that I'd take it back. And so I don't say that you should not be ethical persons. Of course it's good to be an ethical person and if you're going to be a person I would recommend that you be an ethical person. But more than that I also want to say that if we study and follow the precepts as though they were ethical principles or rules then

[01:01]

what that might lead to is that the most you'll become if you're successful is an ethical person, which is pretty good. On the other hand, if you can receive and understand the precepts as Buddha's mind and Buddha's teachings then you can be more than just an ethical person you can learn to behave as an enlightened person as an awakened being. If we follow precepts or anyway some ethical principles or rules it is also possible to do that to make that effort while being in a state of massive denial about what you're actually up to.

[02:11]

It's possible for evil people to try to follow ethical precepts and continue to be extremely harmful to various forms of life, even while they're trying to follow ethical principles. because they're lying to themselves about what they're actually experiencing and thinking and so on. So trying to follow ethical principles does not necessarily produce an ethical person. But still, even if you do sort of approach it from the point of view of following rules, that's about the best you're going to be able to come up with. possibly the best you'll come up with. Whereas if you, in addition to studying precepts, try to finding out what they mean and try to understand how they are Buddha's mind, in other words, to try to understand what your mind is while you're studying them, then studying the precepts can lead you to enter into Buddha's mind and realize it.

[03:26]

So I've been, you know, leading up to and wanting to talk about the second precept of the ten grave precepts, the one about not stealing, and as I've been thinking about this one, I find it very helpful actually to look at the minute details of my conduct and to notice how my mind works around this issue of stealing. I find it very interesting and difficult and embarrassing to see how my mind works around the subtleties of the issue of stealing, of taking what's not given. of what belongs to me and what belongs to others, of what belongs to the Sangha and what belongs to individuals, about what it means to take from the Sangha, all this kind of stuff, all these kinds of examinations I find quite helpful.

[04:42]

But there is a difference in my mind, there's a difference between trying to follow a rule called not stealing and looking at what am I doing around the activity of stealing or not stealing. In one case I'm trying to control myself and may miss a lot of stuff that's going on with me. In the other case I'm not so much trying to control myself but I'm maybe noticing actually how out of control I am around this particular precept and how my mind jumps around and rationalizes and makes various fancy moves about what's me and what's others, what's mine and what's yours, what's business and what's not business. So rather than try to control my mind into not stealing, I've rather been meditating on the precept of stealing to notice what my mind does around these activities, and that approach I get a lot more information than just succeeding or failing at following the precept, because if I succeed at following the precept I still lose a lot of information perhaps if I'm doing that.

[05:56]

Following these precepts or studying these precepts I think does have to do with minute attention to your behavior but that does not have to translate into trying to follow a rule. It can translate primarily into self-examination. In other words, self-examination as studying the self as a way to enter into Buddha's mind, into Buddha's teaching. around this one precept called not stealing. I'd like to go into that precept more later but I'd like now to back up a little bit and look at something a little bit more general or fundamental and The first precept is, what is it, like this?

[07:03]

Avoid evil. Sometimes they say refrain from evil. I think actually, from my studies recently, I think it's better to avoid it. Refraining is a little too friendly. Avoid evil is number one of the three pure precepts and number two is gather all good and three benefit all beings. So under this first one comes not stealing, not killing and so on. Our last meeting we talked about evil, didn't we, our last class, and I told you that I had been studying about the shadow and then since that time

[08:25]

And also as I was driving out of Green Gulch Yvonne Rand said to me, read that book, what do you call it, read the book People of the Lie, is that what it's called? People of the Lie. People of the Lie, she said, read that book. And then when I got down here Jim and Barbara gave me a book called Telling the Truth and And also I would say that in several of my interactions with people here since I've been here, this recent tour of duty, I have been deeply impressed with what I would call, if you excuse the expression, the level of denial that we're into here, primarily denial of pain.

[09:34]

And then I also ran into a statement, I was reading something by Trungpa and he said, you know, we're not particularly seeking enlightenment or merely the experience of tranquility, what we're trying to do is overcome our And I kind of feel like this issue of evil, it's good to look at the evil itself before we approach these great precepts or while approaching these great precepts to bring up this consideration of what evil is some more and what are our issues and behaviors around sin. if we become a little bit more wise to some of our tendencies that may be quite helpful to us in studying these ten precepts.

[10:42]

For example, if we receive these precepts and try to practice them with some awareness of how, what do you call it, how disabled we are, how hobbled we are, how blind we are, that may help us more realistically approach these precepts. Rather than, okay, give me the ten precepts, I know how to do them, here I go. Maybe more of a feeling of, okay, I will receive these precepts but geez, what do they mean? I'll get into it. So I've been reading these books about evil and I'd like to say some of the feelings that I have and I think some other people have around the word evil.

[11:50]

We had a lot of trouble actually re-translating this precept we were saying before, the first portion is Or the precepts or something like that? Well, all three of these are precepts, right? The first one isn't for the precepts, the first one is, literally speaking, in the usual rendition is to avoid evil, or another way to put it is it is the precept of restraint. It's the vow of restraint of misconduct or it's the vow of restraint of unwholesome activity. But literally in the translation that we got it says evil. And we had a hard time saying evil because of all the associations. Some of the feelings that I think I feel around evil, well one of the feelings I have is disgust, fear, mystery. But another thing that comes up when I say evil is good.

[12:55]

And when I say good and evil then I feel uncomfortable about good and evil. And also around the word evil comes up the word devil, right? Devil. And I'm not so comfortable using the word devil either. So evil and devil and then evil and good and then good and God. So you bring up the word evil, you bring up the word devil, you got God, you got good, all these dualities. And then also God, although a lot of us don't like the word and come to Buddhism partly to get away from it, but still the word God is a big word. And again, very mysterious and vast. So again, part of my fear of the word evil is, for myself, it's opening up a huge dimension of all kinds of conflicts. Not to mention that if I bring up the word with you, some of you are going to get disgusted and upset with it too, so then I'm afraid of how you're going to respond.

[14:01]

So that's part of the reason why I don't like to bring up the word evil and why I think some other people don't like to bring it up. And another reason to not want to bring it up is because I'm not saying evil is all psychological but to the extent that it's a psychological phenomenon it is, in the reading I've been doing, a very sort of unresearched psychological phenomenon. Part of the reason for that is that evil has been relegated pretty much by psychologists to the religions. They say, we're not dealing with evil or sin. Religions deal with that. And part of the reason why they're relegated to that was because of this good-evil-God-devil thing, which they don't talk too much about in the science of psychology, but also that Evil goes with good. Evil and good are value things. And also science tries to stay away from value things, to some extent.

[15:07]

And another reason why evil is sort of unknown, somewhat unknown and foreign territory to us, is that, this gives the expression again, the evil ones do not like to be studied. They don't like to study themselves, and they don't want anybody else to study them. As a matter of fact, the essence of evil in a lot of ways is not wanting to be studied by self or other and wanting to keep up the impression of being good. So now I have this thing here and I wrote a whole bunch of stuff around evil. And I don't know, you look kind of depressed and scared. So I don't know if I should go any further. Maybe I'll take a little break.

[16:10]

When people ask me how Zen Center is going, my first response is one of, you know, I wouldn't say it's one of denial, but it sort of is. My first response is, well, particularly these days, I think, well, God, it's great. It's raining, you know, Green Gulch in Tassajar producing all this gorgeous green stuff and blue stuff and red stuff. The river is flowing, the air is pure, the sky is blue, you know. The students are very sincere and kind to each other and loving. That's my first reaction to this great all over. It's great. I have some problems with my back. There is among some of us an excessive amount of denial going on about very basic life issues that's going on too.

[17:18]

And then I can also say, you know, I'm actually a little bit worried about whether what we're doing here has anything to do with Buddhadharma. And when I tell people that, they feel really good. They actually don't feel so comfortable asking a leader of a spiritual community who says, you know, it's all great. They want to hear, you know, I'm not sure if what we're doing is Dharma. I actually am not so sure. I'm not saying it's not, but I wonder if it is. And not only that, but I feel a little uncomfortable wondering if it is. I'd rather not wonder in a way. but I kind of feel also my feet are on the ground when I wonder if it is. And when I tell people that they feel good and they say, that's what you should be wondering about, I'm happy to hear you say that. They don't want me to tell them, we are practicing Dharma at Zen Center, don't worry. This is the Dharma Center here folks, we're practicing Dharma here, this is it, we got it.

[18:23]

They don't want to hear that. If they're members of Zen Center they don't want to hear it, if they're non-members they don't want to hear it, What they want to hear is, well you know we're trying, the weather's good, the students are fairly healthy, they're practicing meditation regularly and you know what, we're actually wondering what the blank in the blank is dharma anyway and we're kind of worried about it. We're a little worried that maybe we're completely deluded about it. They're happy to hear that. It's not a happy thought to actually think that way and look at that but to report that you're doing it to somebody who's you know, checking up on Zen Center, they're happy to hear it. It sounds healthy. What sounds unhealthy is evil, and evil is self-righteousness. Evil is to say, we know what Dharma is here, we got it and we're on the track. This is Dharma Road, we're on it here, right here. Was that a break or do you want another break?

[19:24]

How are you doing? Is it okay? Well, when you were saying that, I immediately thought the reason you can't say what Dharma is is because you equally well cannot say what evil is. I mean, is evil Dharma too? Evil is definitely Dharma too. Definitely evil is Dharma. And what kind of Dharma is evil? Well, one equation that I thought of for evil is, evil is sin plus denial. When I first came to Zen Center, actually one of the first lectures I heard Suzuki Roshi give, he said, if you see a flower and you say it's beautiful, that's a sin. I thought, wow, that's radical and awfully strict. He was a very sweet guy, but he also was kind of strict sometimes, especially with himself.

[20:32]

He wasn't a very self-righteous fellow, actually. He actually knew he had some problems. And... Well, Stewart's not here, I guess, but anyway... I'm also a little embarrassed with the state of my thinking about evil, to tell you the truth. I'm very fresh to it and I feel like I should have been thinking about this and studying this a long time ago, but anyway, there he is. I mentioned your name, Stuart, because you said you were happy to have an abbot who's still, who's not, who's not, you know, not finished.

[21:36]

I was going to say you have an abbot who's not pretending to be finished, but actually I'm so not finished that I even pretend to be finished sometimes. So sometimes I actually slip into presenting myself as though I were finished, and that's part of my unfinishedness, and that's part of my evil, is that to some extent I want to present myself as a finished product of Buddha practice. To the extent that I confess that, I'm turning around, but I do have that tendency to want to look good and look like a good zenny. But anyway, I was using that example, Stuart, that I'm kind of embarrassed at how new I am to the study of evil, and then you walked in. So this definition of evil was ... I don't know what evil is, but the definition is sin plus denial.

[22:40]

Now sin itself by that definition Suzuki Roshi gave of calling a flower beautiful, seeing a beautiful flower and saying it's beautiful, the sin there, what's the sin? What could he possibly mean by the sin there? Well, it's kind of a ... I don't know what it is. But anyway, another kind of sin is that we turn away from our pain. I think we do that a lot, that we turn away from our pain. and then we deny that we're turning away from our pain and then turning away from our pain becomes more than just turning away from our pain. Another definition of sin is one I heard by Goethe somebody in his some of his works he has a little dialogue with himself and somebody says Wolfgang what is sin? What do you think sin is? and Goethe says well same as everybody else does it's whatever you can't stop doing

[23:43]

Maybe that's a Christian idea, but anyway, one idea is that sin is whatever you can't stop doing. Another definition is sin is missing the mark. Or sin is attachment. The basic sin is attachment. Or the basic sin is dualistic thinking. Being the slightest bit off from our true nature. That's sin. A hair's breadth deviation, that's sin. Those are definitions or suggestions about what it sounds about. How about the fundamental affliction of ignorance? Yeah, fundamental affliction of ignorance. Or you know, just simply turning away from your pain. When you turn away from your pain, you've got dualistic thinking working for you there, and you have lying working for you there, and you have laziness working there for you, cowardice, etc., right there, and just turning away from your pain.

[25:00]

Then, repressing it consolidates it. Now, another thing we do, another elaboration of pain is, yes? I'm just glad to be able to understand the person's expression. Sin? To turn away from the pain. I'm wondering if you can reflect on different kinds of pain. For example, before I answer, before I say the example, another thing we do is we will do other things in order to get away from our pain. In other words, sometimes you can't just turn, sometimes you can't turn away from your pain just by going like this. Sometimes you have to do something more elaborate to turn away from the pain. Like sometimes you have to steal in order to turn away from the pain. Sometimes you have to intoxicate yourself in order to turn away from the pain. Sometimes you have to lie in order to turn away from the pain. Sometimes you have to misuse sexuality in order to turn away from the pain. Sometimes you have to, you know, hold on to stuff in order to turn away from the pain.

[26:03]

Sometimes you have to be angry in order to turn away from the pain. Sometimes you have to demean the triple treasure in order to turn away from the pain. In other words, turning away from pain is the fundamental thing in a way. Ignoring the first truth is the fundamental thing and it has these ten varieties. So an example is the precept on anger, okay? Somebody treats you in some way that hurts Okay? Is that alright? Can you give me some examples of ways that people treat you sometimes that hurt you? You can't? Okay, well, some people are hurt when people treat them condescendingly.

[27:03]

They feel hurt by that. or if people treat them disrespectfully, or if people are angry, express anger towards them, or also if people don't recognize them. In other words, if people project onto you and tell you you're something that they think you are, or if people interrupt you when you're working or something, or if people don't appreciate your work, or if people treat you like a child, or if people try to control you or manipulate you. These are things that sometimes people feel hurt by. Okay? Now, when people treat you that way, and instead of being hurt, and feeling hurt, and maybe sitting down, and feeling hurt, and feeling hurt, and feeling hurt, and maybe even saying, I'm hurt, I hurt, I just got hurt,

[28:04]

what you did really hurt me and really before you get angry you just really feel hurt maybe you don't tell them right away but you are hurt and that's what you're feeling and you feel what you feel that's called pain or being hurt to turn away from that is to for example instead of feeling hurt you think oh that person treats me that person's being disrespectful, that person's treating me like a child, that person's controlling me, that person's interrupting me, that person's etc. Immediately you forget about your pain, you turn away from your pain, you start talking about what they're doing. You're turning away from your pain, you're denying your pain, you're deceiving yourself. Or another possibility is You can try to deny the pain by changing the definition of what just happened by writing the person off or submitting.

[29:25]

You know I'm saying well you know I really deserve that or you know they're my boss so it's okay if they treat me that way or I don't care if they talk that way There's other ways to turn away from the pain and not admit you're hurt. One way is getting angry. That's the way I just exemplified. You get angry. You talk about what they did and what turkeys they are. And because of what they did, these bad things that they did or a bad thing that they did, then you get angry. And you get angry. In this case, the example I'm using, you get angry because you turned away from your pain. Sometimes getting angry, as we'll see when we study the precept, sometimes you should get angry. Sometimes it's breaking the precept about not being angry, not to get angry, when there's something to be angry about that you should get angry about. The precept is that you should get angry at something that you should get angry at and you shouldn't get angry at. That's what the precept's about. The example I'm using is anger which has nothing to do with what you should get angry about.

[30:31]

It has to do with, first of all, that you just simply skipped over what's happening to you. And that is what is very common in middle-class American society and middle-class European society, is parents tell the kids that they do not particularly want to hear about the fact that they're suffering. And the reason why they tell the kids that is because their parents told them that. So because their parents told them that, they kind of went along with it, and after going along with it for a while, they kind of stopped feeling it, and then when they got out of condition of feeling it, then they kind of got more into not feeling it, and pretty soon they didn't feel it at all, and then there were just bad people out there. And then when their children were born, we didn't know they weren't supposed to feel pain. They told the parents about the pain. The parents' pain came back after all those years of not having it. Big shock. Please, let's not start this again. And another generation starts stuffing it. All of our parents sometimes told us that they didn't want to see our suffering.

[31:36]

So, being intelligent little beings, we went along with that to some extent. And some of us have gotten kind of out of touch with our suffering. There are some people in Zen Sena that are not too much out of touch with their suffering, that they come and they say, I'm suffering, and they're actually talking about what they're experiencing and they don't have that problem, they have other problems. But a lot of us actually are not too much in touch with our suffering, therefore those of us who are like that are usually pretty angry, or some of us are really angry. And we spend a good share of our day talking about all the bad things that people are doing. And the reason why we're doing that is not because it's smart that people are doing bad things, but because we see them that way, because we are not recognizing our pain that happens in our interactions with them. Yeah. When I think about pain, and the more I kind of try to get in touch with my own pain,

[32:46]

It seems like it would be kind of unloading a lot onto other people to say every single time that I'm feeling a little bit of tension or pain to express that to somebody. It seems the reason that I don't do that is because of a feeling that that would hurt them and that would cause even more problems than the problems that I'm feeling. Could you hear what he said? There's two things I'd like to say to that. One is, I'm not saying that you should express your pain every time you feel it, you know, out loud, because otherwise the Zendo would be very noisy. It'd be, ouch, [...] you know. It's nice if you people just sit there quietly, it's fine. And I don't feel the suffering that people having the Zendo is totally, that's not the, I don't feel such much denial about our physical problems in the Zendo. There's some, and I'm probably guilty of that to some extent, of maybe not being in touch with my pain. But I think people, generally speaking, my impression is, when I leave Sashin, I sit in the Doksan room, people come and talk to me, I am over, you know, I keep, I know, second, third day, I know not today they're going to start hurting, I know.

[34:11]

But still, sometimes I'm amazed, and sometimes it doesn't happen too. people really physically suffer during Seshin, especially the first few, and people come in and say, this is the most painful thing I have ever experienced. I don't feel so much denial around physical pain during Seshins around here. And that's one of the healthy things, is that people are actually admitting their feelings, their physical sensations. But I don't think we should be saying it in the Zendo so much, but it is good maybe to come to Doksan and say it, and get some tips about how to handle it. Okay, but in personal interactions, that's a little different and there we don't... there it's not so much... I'm not so worried about us not telling other people that they hurt us. That's not necessary all the time. What I think is really helpful, what's very very helpful and very very important is that I know and you know when somebody says something to us that hurts us and when somebody looks at us in a way that hurts us it's very important that you and I know that hurt because it did.

[35:13]

In other words, that you and I be aware of the fact that that slight twitch in that person's face really devastated us. That that slight gesture of their shoulder towards us hurt. That the way they talk, the tone of their voice, are the words they said hurt. It's very important for you and I to know that we've experienced pain at that time. It is not necessary to say every time, ouch. It's okay to say ouch every time, no? or to cry every time. It's okay to cry every time you get hurt, especially in this place. But you don't have to, it's okay. In other words, I say it's not unhealthy necessarily not to cry every time you're hurt. It's not necessarily unhealthy not to tell people every time you're hurt. That's not necessarily unhealthy. However, also I would say that if you do tell people every time they hurt you and you really tell them just that they hurt you and you're not telling them secretly that if you haven't actually gotten angry yet.

[36:17]

Again my experience is when people tell me right off boom that that hurt when people come and tell me about their pain I do not have much trouble with that even if their pain is with what I did but it hurts a little bit to hear that I did something to hurt someone so although And when people first started telling me that what I was doing was hurting them, that did hurt me a lot and I had a hard time getting used to that actually. But it did not hurt me to hear that I hurt them, it helped me to hear that I hurt them. I think those people were very kind to me and trusted me enough to tell me that I hurt them and cared enough to tell me. Now, more, when people tell me I hurt them, it doesn't bother me so much. I'm used to it. I'm used to receiving that it hurts, but I'm used to it. I'm used to being hurt by that information, but it doesn't hurt nearly, nearly as much as when people are angry at me.

[37:26]

That really, really hurts me. Plus, it also hurts me not just that it hurts me, but it hurts me because I don't feel like they're actually expressing their love to me at that time. But sometimes when people are angry at me it really, really hurts me and I really, really feel they're expressing their love to me. Certain people, you know, which you might guess who those people are. There are certain people who express anger towards me and I know for sure I trust it completely and it's very helpful. Once in a while I need a wrathful deity to appear in my life. I need it and, you know, I am very grateful and blessed that these wrathful deities do appear in my life occasionally to keep me online. And once in a while, some day, you might be a wrathful deity for somebody, but a wrathful deity means compassion, it does not mean you're trying to hurt them.

[38:30]

I don't tell people every time that I feel that they hurt my feelings, but I vow to try to do it more than I have been doing it, because I haven't been doing it much. And in my case too, my experience is that some people express anger towards me in order to get a reaction, and if they don't get a reaction, they'll try again and again, so it's better to give to them right away and just say, ouch, that's what they're trying to get. So anyway, it's an art that we have to study of how to express it. It's also an art of how to feel it, I think, but let's do that first. There's no question that it's unhealthy to deny the pain, unless I guess there would be some cases where like maybe let's say someone depended on you to carry them across a cold river, through the water of a cold river, and their health depended full water so that you didn't give up halfway across the river.

[39:39]

In that case, maybe a little denial of pain would be good, if it was necessary. But it might not be necessary to deny the pain to go across the river anyway. It might be more helpful, actually, to feel the pain. So I can hardly think of an example where denial of pain is helpful. But there's no rigid thing I want to put out there. I just want to basically say that I think that's one of our main problems. And the things we do in order to avoid pain, those are even greater problems. The things that I've done to avoid and distract myself from pain, those are greater problems. And then to hide those, or to deny those, is then even more of a problem. And I guess the evil is when you basically go into major denial about your sinfulness. and you basically consider yourself to be, you know, basically, you know, basically, you know, I'm, I'm good.

[40:44]

Basically, I mean, you got to make a few little mistakes here, but basically I'm good. And you say that because you know you can't get by with saying I'm perfect. But basically, that's what you think. And that's basically evil. And that's basically super dangerous. And basically when you meet somebody like that, If you're healthy, I agree with Scott Peck, basically you feel you want to get away from the person because they're dangerous, because basically they can do anything, because basically they think they're just fine. They think they're right. And if they make any mistakes or anything, well, it's just reasons for them, basically. It's not like they actually did something wrong, Yes, evil one? In a way, that's right. In a sense, in a way the literal interpretation of those precepts

[41:54]

of restraining yourself and controlling yourself in a way, breaking those in the literal sense is one of the ways we turn away from pain, those are the ways we turn away from pain. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, we should know the literal meaning, we should know that there is a literal meaning, we shouldn't ignore that, we shouldn't deny that either. But to adhere to the literal meaning breaks the precepts from the point of view of Buddha's mind. Because you see, you don't actually have to follow those precepts, all you got to do is admit what's going on and you won't break them. So you don't have to approach them as like rules or principles. But study them. Definitely study them, definitely. Yes, certainly. But before I call on the next two people, what's the feeling now in the room? How are you feeling about this discussion? Feeling check.

[43:06]

Yeah? A little uncomfortable. Do you know what it's about? Yeah, it's about some attachment or belief that I have that in some instances denial of pain equals survival, like for a kid or something. Yeah. So are you talking about mature? When you say, you know, denial of pain equals evil, are you talking about mature? No, no, I said denial of pain is a sin, is sin, and denial of sin is one step up from that. In other words, denying that you do things wrong, denying that you go against these precepts, that you use these mechanisms to avoid pain, denying that is one step worse. So anyway, back to, for some people they had to deny certain things in order to hang in there.

[44:17]

I mean, in order... Yeah, that's right. It's like a survival technique. Right. But then that gets old. So at a certain point to continue denying that. Anyway, that's... I suppose it's... In terms of your definition of sin, so... sin, I guess. The other thing, the other definition of evil, which is one I've used before, and again, also appears in Scott Peck's book, is evil is, you know, live spelled backwards. Evil is something that basically kills. kills life, that kills or diminishes life. So like to take these, for example with children, to take little beings and do stuff that squelches their vitality, then it's more likely that we will not also then hurt them who are creating the shit in our life and try to get them to stop being that way and basically

[45:36]

kill them a little bit kill them and when we just kill them make them be less alive because their aliveness is producing shit and they're throwing the shit around the room and that annoys us it frustrates us it is not how we want to be spending our time it is not intellectually satisfying etc and so when another little kid appears in the tummy We are not necessarily happy for five more years of shit. So as soon as possible we want to get this little critter to be convenient so we have less pain. If we can admit our pain, adding one more kid does not mean... adding one more shit producer does not bother us that much. That's why people have nine kids, they have eleven. You know, they don't flip out usually. But if you have zero to go to one, it's like, and you go from one to two, right?

[46:41]

We don't want life. Get this life out of here. That's evil. Get it out of here. Kill it. That's what I mean by evil. And sin is part of life too. In other words, the fact that we turn away from pain, that's part of life. We can't help it, but at least willing to admit not only the pain, but also that we do all kinds of messy things around the pain that, at some level anyway, we've got to start accepting our life. Okay. Stuart and Mark? For me, making the move from denial to accepting the pain is pretty big. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy to say I want to do that. Yeah. But exactly how, it's hard for me to admit that I want to do it, but how do I actually start out doing it, because it's such, you know, the separation between them is so large, especially with the large habitual mind energy keeping me, denying me, even admitting it isn't enough to

[48:01]

Even admitting what? It's not enough. You've got to actually admit the pain. You can't just say you want to. You have to actually do it. That's right. And that's a big step. It's a big step. And it actually hurts, because you're actually letting the pain in. In fact, most people, in my experiences, most people when they make that shift, although they feel the pain, they feel good too. They feel they have their feet back on the earth. They're not flying around in mid-air anymore. And also, in my experience, when I'm talking to somebody who's not admitting their pain and doing various other stuff, and then they make that switch, I personally tell them how great I feel to be feeling like now they're telling me the truth. That feels really good and they feel good probably to be telling the truth.

[49:03]

There's a lot of benefits of admitting what's happening even though what's happening that we're admitting is that we're uncomfortable or in pain or in a lot of pain and also we're scared because we've had pain in the past that when we were little we couldn't handle and not only couldn't we handle it but when it came up we got a lot of other shit happened to us that made it even more difficult to handle And we're afraid we're not going to be handled again, but anyway, it's difficult. Well, I have not seen that too much myself. I've seen that people are able to handle now what they couldn't handle before. The hard part seems to be to get over the deception. Once people are telling the truth, it seems like we're doing pretty well, especially in a situation like this. where people respond very well to truth. I've experienced they respond, when you tell people truth, even though it's ugly or painful, they're usually quite supportive. You know, I'm not saying, you're right, it might be a problem.

[50:11]

Exactly! We have to let ourselves and other people fall apart. Now, in fact, they don't usually fall apart, but we have to be willing to let them fall apart. And I've told a number of people recently, If you fall apart, you know, we'll support you. And, you know, I don't think they will, but in fact, if that's the price, it's worth it. You know, and sometimes the price is very high. Now I have a little dilemma here. I have Pam, who wants to talk, and Stuart, who is before you. Can you go before you? Yeah, and it seems in some respect that fundamental sin is turning away from pleasure, and that equally so, that's even more of the problem, to turn away from denying and distort the pleasure mechanisms and the pleasure responses of the mind.

[51:29]

And it seems incontrovertible that it's also true that turning away from and denying our pain is, in some respect, I guess in a technical sense, a form of sin. But it seems that just turning away, in that sense, it's just turning away from whatever is happening. I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't passed over, that the turning away from pleasure is a really important problem. Yeah, and one of the main pains is that we're supposed to turn away from things that would be pleasurable. Like the example I used, we're supposed to turn away from taking our clothes off at the airport. because, you know, it would be quite pleasant to take it off and just run around without our clothes on, and then also we could poop anywhere we wanted to without wetting our pants.

[52:33]

It could be lots of fun, but we're not supposed to do it. And so then we got pain over that conflict, but pleasure is very much part of the pain, is turning away from pleasure. But also just turning away from what's happening is... But, you know, I hate to push it, but even pleasure according to the, you know, from the point of view of an Arhat or a Buddha, even in pain, even in pleasure, even in neutral feelings, there's a suffering that you're turning away from. But anyway, it's basically turning away from what's happening. That's right. Pam, is what you said something still you want to talk about? Well, my experience of evil is not To say that it's the turning away from the pain that's evil. I didn't say that. No. I retract that. I take it back. That's more like sin. To turn away from what's happening is more basic.

[53:35]

That's something we cannot avoid. We do that. We do that all the time. We're always turning away from what's happening. All the time. We can't stand to stay with the intensity of what's happening. We're all the time sinning. That's sin. To deny that and to not notice that you're turning away from what's happening. That's a step up. Yeah, even that, I mean, what my experience of evil is, is it starts, you know, as we've been talking about from a psychological perspective, of certain elements of myself that are threatening or the possession of which causes me pain, certain aspects of myself. So, in repressing them, then that element itself actually becomes evil. So in circumstances where this particular way of being that I have that causes me pain is activated, that's when I actually experience evil. I have the feeling in myself of being tormented. So it's not the turning away or even denying that I'm turning away that's evil.

[54:43]

It's actually the thing itself that is not acceptable actually becomes I couldn't quite follow that, maybe if you went over it again I could follow it. Well it's... what we're saying is sort of the process of denying that you have pain is evil, is that what you're saying? No, I'm not. that that's basic ignorance is to turn away from what's happening or to not recognize and to not be aware of your pain, that's a sin. And also the things we do in order to avoid pain, in other words we cannot help but turn away from our pain, we cannot help but turn away from what's happening, we do that, we all do. And we also will do certain things in order to get away from the pain. That we all do to some extent.

[55:43]

That's unavoidable, I think. But it is not unavoidable. It is not or it is possible to admit that you do that. Most people I know admit that they do that. That's called honesty about the fact that you can't stand reality. Most people are somewhat honest about that. it is evil to not admit that you turn away from reality, to not admit that you commit those sins, that's evil, that's what I'm saying is evil. And the thing is it's hard to ... when you say that once, you're sort of saying it kind of like in general. Because if you say you're doing it once in a while, we all would agree we do it once in a while, none of us are saying we're ... I shouldn't say none of us, but most of us have not yet been able to admit that we are doing nothing but that. you have to be fairly well awake to actually see that you are constantly doing it. Enlightened people say that they're constantly sinning, they're constantly turning away from reality.

[56:45]

That's the reality, that's the dharma of being a sinful person, which a lot of awake people say that they are utterly sinful and always turning away from reality. In other words, the fundamental affliction of ignorance is like non-stop. So most of us have not yet seen that clearly, so we are admitting to some extent... I admit to some extent that I turn away from reality. I admit that right now, okay? But I'm admitting more than that about myself. I also admit that sometimes I even try to cover up that I sometimes turn away from reality. The actual covering up of the sin or even actual belief and stance that some people actually have, that they don't do any sin, that leads to basically what we call true horrible evil.

[57:48]

In other words, there's no honesty in the situation. And I don't see that kind of thing going on here, but it's also like It's not like totally impossible here either, because I see it in myself to some extent. I see sin, of course, and I also see evil. So do you feel that it's evil? Do you have a feeling of evilness? Do you experience that? Yeah. Yeah, and it's different from feeling of sin. It's more... it smells worse, it's more repulsive, It's more dangerous, I'm more embarrassed about it, and ... It feels different.

[58:51]

It's one step up, it's one step worse, and it is also avoidable. Evil is avoidable, sin is not, according to this language we're using right now. And it's somewhat Christian, I'm sorry if it annoys you, but it's not Christian. It's Judeo-Christian. Pam? Well, one thing is that I just feel like most often recognizing ouch, the way I recognize ouch is by recognizing that I'm angry. Do you want me to say what she says? Yes. Okay. Start over, please. The first thing I said was that recognizing, when you were describing, you know, if you could recognize in an interaction or in your life for every moment, ouch, ouch, ouch, that seems... If you could recognize in every interaction, ouch, ouch, ouch, then... Then that's sort of ideal.

[60:27]

That's sort of ideal. But... my experience is most often that what I recognize first is that I'm angry. Her experience is that she recognizes first that she's angry rather than the ideal of ouch ouch ouch. And that that is always an immediate indication of oh there's an ouch going on. And that's an indication that there's an ouch going on someplace. Immediately. Huh? Immediately. She said it was an immediate indication. She asked what you just said. Michael said that she said that it was an immediate indication that there was an ouch. I disagree that it's an immediate indication. It's a delayed indication. It's the first indication I saw. Yeah, so that's something useful about anger, is it tips you off to that there's some ouch someplace. So, anyway, the other part of my... Can you hear me if I do this?

[61:35]

The other part of my experience in this is that if I feel angry and I know, oh, there's ouch here, and then I kind of push myself into recognizing what the ouch is, But that generally doesn't work. And that there's a way in which it's important for me to sort of honor the denial that I'm in. So if I'm in denial of an ouch because I'm angry, because I notice that I'm angry, then it's helpful to me to recognize, oh, maybe there's some really big ouch going on, and I'm not right in this moment ready to just dive into it. So this is the second part of what I want to say, which is that I feel a little bit uncomfortable. I feel, on the one hand, wonderfully invited by your invitation to sort of fall apart in the face of all the ouch. On the other hand, I feel a little bit like, let's not treat this lightly.

[62:47]

Like, there's really a lot of ouch. And I myself have been through a really big falling apart in a number of occasions. And so, I'm just a little uncomfortable with it. If you want to, go ahead, fall apart. Because my experience is that it's actually, you know, it's like throwing shit all over the walls. It's really messy. So I'm not saying that I don't appreciate the invitation, but just that if that's really the invitation, I want to make sure that the people who are inviting and the people who I live with and so on and so forth are aware of the mess that could potentially arise. It's not an invitation to you to fall apart, I didn't mean that. What it is, is an invitation to you to experience your pain and support to you if you fall apart.

[63:53]

I'm not inviting you to fall apart. I'm telling you, I'm inviting you to, if you can, experience your experiences that are happening anyway. And if you fall apart, I will support you to the best of my ability and I'll try to get everybody else to support you and I think they will. I think they will. It's not an invitation to your fall apart, though. It's an invitation to you to have an experience. You probably won't fall apart. We will, however, definitely fall apart if we don't do what I'm suggesting. And I am an example of somebody who's falling apart because of not feeling enough pain. My back problem is because I wasn't feeling enough pain. and therefore I fell apart. And that's what I'm talking about. I have been blessed by wrathful deities who come to get me when I don't do my work. And my back is helping me. My back is saying, come on, admit you're crippled. Remember, you've got a problem down there.

[64:55]

You can't do certain things. You've got a dislocated spine and no disc down there. You've got to be careful. You've got to be You've got to get way down in there and you've got to address all that tension that's trying to make up for this problem. It's messy, painful work. And if you don't take care of that, we're going to close down. As a matter of fact, we are going to close down for a little while. And then, now we see you're not going to stop, so then my friends even tell me we're closing down. So the people in the body say, stop! So, one way or another, hopefully we wake up. Now easiest way is just to wake up with the possibility that if you wake up you'll fall apart. Now if you refuse to wake up then we'll have you fall apart to make you wake up. But you may be able to wake up just by turning around and looking at what's happening knowing that you might fall apart if you look because it might be totally a wipeout. But what most therapists I understand what they mostly experience as the people they can't stand who wipe them out

[65:58]

are the people who are totally into denial of their evil, of their sin. That's what wipes the therapist out. People who bring suffering, you know, if you think about somebody coming in and like opening up their guts and not only showing you their shit but showing you their balls. Wouldn't you be shocked? Wouldn't you be shocked? But that's a lot easier, you can handle that shock, you're built to handle that shock. But if somebody comes in and denies reality with tremendous force, like this, again, the Scott Peck book, he was talking about meeting the parents of this boy that came in, these parents who had made this boy, you know, this boy, his brother had committed suicide with a .22 rifle and they gave the boy the same .22 rifle for Christmas.

[67:00]

These parents came to visit the psychiatrist and he started talking to him and he said, I wanted to go home, I wanted to end the interview. No, he didn't say that about them, he said it about the boy. When the boy told him that they gave him the 22 for Christmas, he said, I wanted to go home, I wanted to end the interview right away. When you get confronted with this kind of stuff, that's what's overwhelming. It's the result of this tremendous lie that really wipes us out. Pain we're built for. However, the way we sometimes handle it is we go flat for a while. We're also built for going flat. We're built for falling down on the ground and lying there until we can move again. We're built for calling for help. Help! We're built for that kind of stuff. What we're not built for is handling huge, powerful lies. Yeah, that dead example.

[68:03]

So people who lie, would you get these for the library? People's lives in the library and also this book on shadow, I'll give it to you, Meeting the Shadow. I don't know, Jim Jordan may give us his copy when I'm done with it, we'll see. He's talking about how we bludgeon ourselves and beat people up with these rules. Thinking about the instance when I was in junior high, where I sort of being conscious.

[69:14]

I remember what I did. My sister and I were home when my parents were gone. And I was taking French at the time. And there was this one phrase, Mangez-vous, oui ou non? Which means, do you eat, yes or no? And we were watching television, and there was this chair that spins in the house. And I just started spinning in the chair. And every time that I was pointing at Karen, I would say, Mangez-vous, oui ou non? And I just kept this up. And she kept dressing up. And I kept escalating and speeding faster. Eventually she went into the dining room. I followed her, repeating the spreads. She wasn't taking French yet, so she didn't know what I was saying. And eventually she led the group. I remember being really kind of surprised, because it always would have taken physical means to get her out of my face.

[70:33]

And there was also some conscious... I was aware of a feeling I don't know if I could have articulated it at that point, but it had a real sadistic element to it. And in our talking about evil, it's a lie that there's been no awareness of the hurt and the pain of causing others Anyway, so there's this gray area that I'm wondering about now about evil and that awareness and sort of pleasure in and surprise.

[71:38]

All those things can be mixed in a very potent kind of situation. but it not being aware of it, it being not noble awareness necessarily, but yet it's still something which you can call noble. Well, you know, Scott Peck actually says some things which I'm not comfortable with. He talks about actually evil people, as though there's some people who've like crossed over the line and like they stay there. And are aware of it. And they're not aware of it. And then some of the things he says about those people When I was reading the book, I started writing initials of some people who were like that, like the evil people that he was talking about. Not necessarily that they were exactly completely crossed over, but they do some things like these evil people. I started writing their initials, but then I changed and started writing my own initials, because I really felt like that's more where it's at. When I see it in other people, I just put my own initials down.

[72:43]

And it wasn't like just an exercise either, but I don't think I've completely crossed over and completely in denial and think I'm perfectly self-righteous and admit no imperfections, but I have a tendency that way and I can understand that and to some extent I can empathize with those people. And Scott Pettig said when he was talking to the parents of this boy that gave him the when he was one of his first cases and he said he could not empathize at all with them and just simply loathed them and didn't want them for his clients and wanted to get out of the room and didn't want to help them. Didn't think he could anyway. But he said 20 years later he learned something called the name of what it was. He didn't know it was evil when he saw it. He said, but I found the word for it and now if I met them again I could have some empathy, I would dare to take them on perhaps, even though it probably wouldn't be successful, just the word, you know.

[73:52]

But still, it's very tricky business, it's very tricky business and it's difficult to bring it up. And I appreciate that you are sitting here through this crappy discussion. Any other indications of denial than anger? Slips, verbal slips are an indication of denial. When you do something and people seem to misinterpret you, that's an indication you might be denying Dreams are an indication of denial, what's happening in your dreams. Humor, what you laugh at, is often an indication of denial. And then breaking all the precepts, breaking those precepts are indications of denial.

[75:01]

Being unhealthy is an indication of denial. Being alive is an indication of being alive. So I was suggesting to somebody, we make a new Buddhist flag that says denial on it. We only raise it during practice periods, so we don't want to horrify the guests. But I think, you know, why don't we just admit it? And also admit that we don't know what we're denying. But there are ways to find out what you're denying. One of the main ways is to ask for feedback, and you can also sort of make sure that the other person will do it nicely and all that. You can make some deals so it's safe, but ask for feedback with people that know you. Don't ask for feedback with somebody that doesn't know you, they'll just say, But somebody who knows you well, ask them for feedback. Like one of the characteristics of an evil person is that they come up with affirmation of themselves, what is it, sort of in the face of any information they come up with an affirmation of themselves.

[76:25]

And that's what my wife says about me. So I'm going to put R.A. next to that one, right? It's almost time to stop, and we have Pam and Stuart, and who else? And Sue and Michael. So, I don't know, I forgot who was first, and Linda. I started back when Pam spoke. Pam said something important, I think, that often she only begins to realize that she's hurt by noticing that she's angry. And that if she tries to get right down to the hurt, that doesn't work out real well. And I think that that is important. I think that we, it's difficult to do this, to do any kind of work based entirely on a rational analytical framework.

[77:36]

And that we always have to start where we are. And I found that working with myself, but also working with other people. If I try to show them, give them insight into their condition, into the source of their condition. If somebody comes to me with a problem, I say, oh, well, the explanation for this is very simple. It has to do with something else that we're not talking about right now. That usually doesn't work out. Usually what works out is after they become fully rooted in what's going on now, then they themselves are ready to go back to, or go on to, the next step. So it seems like the next step always proceeds from a full accounting of the present situation, even if we suspect that this isn't it. Ah, Sue? Picking up on another thing Pam said about... I think sometimes we can't expect to overcome denial all at once.

[78:45]

Sometimes we have to do it in little steps and we might have to say, yeah, I guess I'm suffering a lot about... there's a lot of pain here and I'm in denial about it and I'm recognizing that I'm in denial about it, but I can't... I have to keep on being in denial about it a little bit longer. And you're already moving... The way to get over denial is not necessarily the way you would think you'd get over denial. The way to get over denial may be to say to yourself, I hope I have the courage to continue to deny as long as I have to. as long as I need to. I hope I have the courage to continue to deny as long as I need to." That may be the way to talk yourself out of it, to tell yourself that, I'm going to really be there for you and make sure you can deny as long as you have to, I'll give you that space.

[79:51]

Then you may feel like, oh well great, I don't have to do it anymore, I can just do whatever I want to probably, so I'll just drop it now and come back to it later. Oh yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's interesting what Chris brought up. I mean, you've had a lot of humans, and it seems like they get kind of lost too, but how sometimes, it seems like the main point of what he was saying is how sometimes you can be doing evil while you're aware that it's evil, and yet somehow that's not enough. I've had the experience of doing things that I know are kind of cruel, It seems like it has something to do with separating myself from the action that I'm doing. But I'm not really sure what it's about. Well, there's all kinds of pain, and one of the pains is to try to find out that kind of stuff.

[80:58]

That's one type of pain, that kind of examination, to work yourself into that. Look at that. So we have Sashin coming up where we're going to have physical pain to deal with, But if there ever is at any time when there's not physical pain, then there's another kind of pain that's available, and that is, look at all this stuff. Look at all this stuff. Zazen would not be so boring if we could look at this stuff. Linda? I was just, when you were throwing out other ways to know that you're in denial, that you're devising, besides anger, what I was going to say was involuntary movement in Zazen. One of the things that if anybody even suggested to me that maybe something was going on that I wasn't looking at, nobody did for about 10 or 12 years. So I just moved from the house and I couldn't sit still. But then the bell rang and then I trot out like a good semi-student. You look like a witch then for a second.

[82:02]

Was there anybody else besides Pam that had their hands raised before? I was wondering, as Chris said, on something in the Scott Peck book, which is that there's a story in the Scott Peck book that where there's the first story in the book about the guy who makes a pact with the devil and there's a sort of, there's like a turning point in the story where this guy is basically makes Peck the devil and brings his son into it. And he brings to Scott Peck a feeling that he's feeling guilty. He says, I've got the guilties. Anyway, the way I think it addresses what you're saying in part is that he says, that's good. There's a way in which if you're aware of, you can be aware of doing something evil, That's one step.

[83:06]

And then there's being aware of doing something evil and recognizing that you feel guilty, that you feel not so good about your enjoyment of doing evil. And he describes that as being kind of like a positive thing. That's when he says to the guy in the story, I'm really glad you felt guilty. And that's the turning point of the case in that particular story. guilt poisoning as another important indicator of what's going on? Another thing he says is that these evil people are not psychopaths, they're sociopaths. Sociopaths and psychopaths are not particularly into covering up what they're doing. And you know, they're also people who don't particularly mind or get worried about getting hit over the head with shovels and stuff like that. and they're more out in the open about it in a lot of ways.

[84:08]

The evil people are ones who are carefully doing all this stuff and covering it up so that other people and they will continue to think that they're righteous folks. So, it's different than a psychopath or a sociopath who don't even they don't even empathize at all with people, they're almost innocent of the whole thing. Of course, the etymology or the etiology of how they develop is ... I don't know about so much. I hate to say this, but one of the key things he comes to is that one of the key factors of these evil people is that they have a kind of unsubmitted will, they don't submit to anything.

[85:09]

And again there too, you know, I could identify with that to some extent of really being stubborn and not submitting, but what welled up into me is, boy you better submit to the triple treasure, you better You better submit to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, you know, put them up there. It's time to stop. Is there a song you can sing? The Red Red Robin. That's a good one, that's a good denial one. Bad to the bone. Any song you have that you think would be apropos? Well, how about All My Ancient Twisted Karma?

[86:11]

I just want to say that, you know, Again, I get sometimes a little excited when I'm talking and enthusiastic about things, but I seriously, you know, when I think about this business about evil, it does really, you know, it shakes me deeply. It really does bring up deep questions when I think about it and stuff, and I'm not telling you what you should do or anything, but I just say that And thinking about, for example, when I think about these precepts, when I think about the second precept and I watch my mind, how it does some stuff, and I'll go into that with you in detail when we talk about it.

[87:45]

Studying these precepts is really inspiring and awesome for me and I'm impressed by the effort people have made to convey them to us and teach us about this aspect of the teaching. And I don't know if tonight we hit the right tone or, you know, how to study these precepts the right way. I kind of feel like tonight was a little bit of a, you know, a little bit gory or whatever, almost like opening up. almost like causing a little bit of a wound in us, maybe. But, you know, I kind of feel like, you know, I appreciate you tolerating this awesome and somewhat frightening topic and looking at this

[88:54]

And I don't know what song to sing. Nobody else has a hit that everybody wants to do. Maybe we can just go to sleep and carry on. Is that one you want to do? Good night.

[89:24]

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