Back into you, or do you just dissipate by analyzing it? What do you mean by analyzing it? Well, I mean, I take it apart instead of just letting it all come out and start and take it apart and say, well, I shouldn't feel that way because of this, or I shouldn't feel that way because of that. Okay, let's say we got some... Because of certain ways that they are. Well, if you feel angry and you haven't talked to anybody about it yet... But you dissipate it before it comes to come. I mean, you analyze it where you think, well, I shouldn't be angry because of this, and you find it going. Do you know what I mean? I do, I do, and I guess my feeling is kind of like, that's fine. If you get angry and you analyze it and it dissipates, that's fine.

[01:04]

But it seems to me, you could, what do you call it, you could use it more fully than that. How? By finding out a little bit about, not so much how to dissipate it, but what it's about and where it comes from and who's angry. Because although you might be able to dissipate this anger, which is fine, and it's probably better to dissipate it than to hurt somebody with it, you didn't necessarily learn much from that, except maybe how to dissipate that one. And maybe you can dissipate some other ones, but some you might not be able to dissipate. And also, you know, it isn't going to be that much fun to keep dissipating anger for eternity. You know? It gets boring after a while, and sometimes you're tired, and instead of dissipating the anger and analyzing it, you just smash somebody for a little change of pace.

[02:06]

So dissipating anger by analytic means is a kind of, what do you call it, what do you call that, damage control. And damage control is okay. But how about enlightenment? You know? How about, like, freedom from the source of this anger? How about freedom from nasty, petty, you know, stingy, mean, harmful, selfish activity? Rather than dispersing and dispersing and always putting out fires, which gets boring and you need breaks anyway, but you can't do that 24 hours a day. Day after day, year after year, you get pooped and then sort of smash. So, but anyway, if you're successful at dissipating, fine. But I'm talking about how do you study this in such a way that you won't just dissipate it for the moment, but you'll learn something. And gradually you'll learn and [...] learn. And also, learning is not so boring.

[03:12]

Learning is kind of fun. And you don't need breaks from learning. You can learn all night. As a matter of fact, that's what you're doing, right? Even when you're sleeping, you're, like, trying to learn. You're not putting out fires when you're sleeping, though. That's the nice thing about sleeping. It's restful. You're not putting out fires. You can be angry in your sleep. You don't have to put it out. You can learn from your anger in your sleep, right? Because it's safe. So, you know, rather than just trying to dissipate the anger, why don't you try to find out what it's about? For example, is there some pain here? Did somebody hurt you? How did they hurt you? Who did they hurt? How come it was hurtful? What's there about you? Now, that might dissipate the anger, too, but it might not dissipate the anger. As a matter of fact, it might flare it up a little bit. I don't know. But in the process, you're starting to learn the source. The source is coming from something you're doing, the way you're negotiating with the pain. And something about the pain illuminates something about you.

[04:15]

If you study it that way, then it starts to become enlightening and setting you free from the conditions for the anger in the first place, and that's where the full self-expression comes out. It's not just anger, but it's your anger. You feel that anger. And what is it about you and your expression there? And that's why if in your own mind, or in the presence of your teacher or your therapist, you can bring this anger and this self that feels it out in the open, you can learn about this self. And when you learn about the self, through self and full self-expression, then you start to unravel the source of harmful anger. So, rather than like, here's some anger coming trying to disperse it, let's rather, not aggravate it or make it bigger or anything, but let's see, what is this anger actually?

[05:18]

Before I disperse it, what is it? Exactly what shape anger is this? And the clearer you are about the anger, the more you'll learn from it. So learn from it before you disperse it. Before you disperse your life, learn about it. Because if you disperse it, guess what's going to happen? Another one's going to come. This life is non-stop, it just keeps coming. You cannot stop life, it just keeps coming. We are plugged into an infinite process, and you can disperse it here and disperse it there, but it just keeps coming back, keeps coming back, keeps coming back, keeps coming back. There's no end to this thing. So, hold it away, hold it away, hold it away. Buddha go out and sit in front of the army, okay. But, you know, long term, we got to face it. Make our peace with it. And full scale, make our peace with full scale life. Not just keep kind of disperse it and disperse it. That's why I say, let's try to fully live, fully live.

[06:25]

Of course, when you fully live, there's problems in fully living, right? Because what happens when you fully live? What happens? Death comes close. If you shrink back and only live, you know, 10% or even 92%, death is, you know, 92% death is kind of 8% away, right? 10% death is like 90% away. Hey, I'm so little and I'm so puny and I'm so kind of restrained and repressed and, you know, holding back, nobody's going to bother me. They may kick me, but I'm not going to feel it anyway because I'm so tight. I'm already hurting so much pain anyway from being so tight that, you know, nobody can hurt me. But when you fully express yourself, you're like totally, you know, if anybody, you have no distance between you and death. At the surface of life is death. Death's all around life. They coexist. You come right up to the fullness of your life, death. But then that's your life. That's what your life is. And when you fully express your life,

[07:29]

completely, that takes love because what you tend to do is you tend to overdo it or underdo it. You have to carefully, fully, you know, find that place which is truly your anger. Not approximately, but your true expression. That's your life. And that's very educational because when you see exactly what your life is, you realize it's not that. But you have to see what you think it is before you can see it's not that. And if you don't, if you hold back on what you think it is, you can't be relieved from what you think it is. And then you just go and keep thinking, well, life, my life's what I think it is. My life is just this little thing here. And I'm hurt that somebody's messing with my little thing. I thought if I had this little thing, I'd get by. You know, people would, you know, tolerate it. But no, they're picking on my little thing, too. And I'm angry about that. So you find out, oh, actually what I'm really angry about is that I'm not living my life fully.

[08:30]

So at first I'm angry that I'm not living my life fully and then I'm angry that people are giving me a hard time, you know, with my not even living my life. I thought, you know, at least give me a break. You know, I've already basically sacrificed my life. You know, be nice to me. But when you fully live your life, you don't expect people to be nice to you anymore. Why should they be nice to you? Why should they give you compensation? You've got your whole life. You don't need anything more. And also you realize that although you're totally threatened, you're only threatening your independence. And actually everybody gives you your life. But they don't do you any favors. They just give you your life. So you've got to fully express yourself. So when you feel anger, there it is. What is it? What is it? And if analysis helps you understand it, good. Rather than analysis blows it away. And then analysis helps you. Where does anger start and where do you stop? Who are you? What are you? What's bothering you?

[09:32]

Where's the pain? And okay, okay, now I get back to the, now I feel pain. Rather than disperse the pain, what is the pain? And if you can fully express your pain and fully feel your pain, and then you can practice patience with your pain. And if you can practice patience with your pain, you can understand your pain. You can see the source of your pain. And you'll see the source of your pain. And it has something to do with yourself. And then we see the source of your pain is something to do with yourself. Then you can see yourself. And do you see yourself, the source, and so on. Full expression. You know, but again you've got to be loving about this so you don't under, underexpress or overexpress. You've got to do it just right. Yes? I was wondering, what if you kill somebody because you love them, because they're in pain and they ask you to, and you help them, you facilitate some type of euthanasia. Is that considered karma? If you think that you did it, it's karma. Yeah. And if you think it's beneficial, if you think it's helpful to that person to do it,

[10:40]

according to your understanding, you think you did a wholesome, skillful, helpful thing. So for you, to the best of your knowledge, it's a wholesome, karmic act. What if you call your boss a flaming asshole? Pardon? What if you call your boss an asshole? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah? And if you think you said that, then you think you did an act of verbal karma. You think you did that? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did. Yeah, so that's your understanding. So then, since you think that way, you have to take responsibility that you think that way. And, since you, and you will, and you will take, I mean, something will happen to you because you think you did that. Now what some people do is they say, they try to not notice what they're doing, but covering it up doesn't take it away.

[11:40]

Not noticing that you think you did it, doesn't take away the result. It just means you're more surprised when the result comes. I was fully present. Yeah, right. But, the question is, which you can tell us or not, whether you think that was wholesome that you told them. Whether you think it was helpful to tell him that he was an asshole. I'm not sure yet. Yeah. It felt good at the time. It felt truthful. It felt honest. I know I'm going to get in trouble, but I don't care. So I'm not sure if it's good or bad. Right. Well, it's possible that you could say, that it's possible, it's somewhat different to say, you are a flaming asshole, than saying, I think you're a flaming asshole. It's slightly different. Generally speaking, the latter is more wholesome. Unless you're talking to someone who's, you know, fairly enlightened and they know what you mean when you say, that you are is shorthand for, I think you are.

[12:55]

Strictly speaking, strictly speaking, to say to somebody, I think you are an asshole, can be a very intimate and loving thing to say. And again, if you did it, if you did it so fully, which you're not claiming. I don't know, I can't think down to this. Well, you just, you just, I heard you, it's on tape. You said, you said, I think, I'm pretty sure I did that, you said that. That means you didn't, that means, I'm saying, my proposition is, that means you didn't fully express yourself. Because you think, retrospectively even, you think you did it. When you fully express yourself, you do not feel like you did it. It's, you know, it's like you're a vehicle of the Divine. Well, it's funny, because I was lost in the moment, and then after it was over, it was almost about ten minutes, I told him everything I thought. The ten minute thing? I don't know what I was going to tell him. Was I just there? Did I just say that? I don't know, it felt weird.

[14:02]

So maybe, maybe you're just, maybe now you're lying, and you just don't want to tell us that really, you weren't there. That yourself did drop away, and there was full self-expression, and there was nobody there. And it wasn't karma. I can't decide, I think it's hard to figure it out. Yeah, well, maybe it was the first time you had that present in your life, and it's just blinding radiance, and you just, later looking back ... Or blinding insanity, I'm not sure when. Well, they're closely related. They're closely related. Again, you know, there are certain situations which are very violent, you know, and they're so violent that, actually, in this movie, the guy who actually committed the murder described what it's like to shoot a policeman's head. And he talked about how everything kind of got blown away at the moment, you know, how bright it was. But, you know, it's a subtle difference between that kind of intensity that violence creates, and still being present and loving at the same time.

[15:03]

Which tends to eliminate the violence and create intimacy and reciprocity and interdependence. So, you know, you're not sure what happened, but I'm just saying it's possible to speak, to tell someone how you feel with tremendous rage, and have it really be something that you don't do. And I've had people talk to me, who've expressed rage to me, and I didn't feel like a person was there, or a self was there talking to me. I felt like it was, you know, that the person was speaking for the world. That, you know, 200 people can't talk to me. Sometimes one person talks to me for 200. So sometimes we say, when you shout the shout of the Great Assembly, when you speak rage for everybody, it's not really karma. Like when you see, when you see, I don't know, something, you know, a child being treated cruelly, or anybody being treated cruelly.

[16:17]

Let's say just a child being treated cruelly. You can scream no, or you can cry, you know, in rage at that thing, but it's not, even if it's your child, it's not necessarily personal. It's not necessarily something you're doing. It's something that everybody in the universe feels about that. Including the person who's doing it. And you can express that for the world. You're doing the shout of the Great Assembly, of all beings. It's not, and that is what we mean by not being angry. That's not being angry when you express that kind of rage on behalf of the whole population of living creatures. Including the two people that maybe are in this painful interaction. The whole universe says, no, it's not this way. And you say that with your whole heart, and you don't say it kind of like, well, I'm going to say this, but maybe I'm doing something wrong, or people won't like this, or something like that. This has not got nothing to do with it.

[17:18]

You're speaking for everybody. It's called the wrath of God. And maybe that's what's had the wrath of God. I don't know. But no, when I asked you, you said you did it. So, you know, maybe you're... Well, I mean, I remember being in the room and doing that. Yeah, well... It felt weird. Well, yeah. It felt good. Again, you said weird. You know, weird is an interesting word. Weird means a destiny or fate. You know, maybe it was just your fate to do that. Maybe at the time you weren't there. And maybe later you're just saying, well, probably since I'm usually there when I do things, I was there then too. And probably I did do it. But maybe at the time you didn't, and now you're just sort of like assuming you were. Maybe at the time you weren't. Anyway, it's possible to do something which is usually harmful when a person does it. And have that same act be something that's not a person doing it, but is the whole world acting through a person for the education of another. Some people need people to scream at them to wake up.

[18:19]

They need it. And they get it, and it sometimes is very helpful to them. Snaps them out of a deep sleep. Sometimes they're lying, [...] they're lying. They just keep lying and lying, and nobody screams out loud enough to say, no, you're lying, this is not true. Nobody says it loud enough. And then finally, somebody has the destiny to speak for everybody and says, and the person goes, oh yeah, well, it's true. I got it, thank you. Maybe that was the case, I don't know. But when the person does that, when a person does that, I think, I don't want to make rules exactly, but after you're done, you don't do it again. You know, you're not angry afterward and want to do it again. You do it again, and then that's, even the first one, you know,

[19:25]

but you don't do it again. It's over. I think so. But I don't like to make that rule exactly, but it's kind of like that. It's kind of like it's over. The job's done. The expression's been made. And maybe you'll get in trouble for it, but you don't care at that time. You're not into calculating whether you're going to survive this or not. And so in that sense, it's kind of insane, because you might get in trouble for it. You know, like this guy named Jesus did, right? Buddha didn't do that kind of stuff, so he didn't get in trouble. But some Zen teachers and some Buddhist masters and mistresses have done that kind of stuff and gotten in trouble for it, and it's still been very helpful. But usually, actually, you don't get in trouble for it. Usually it works. The person says, thank you. I needed that. It's happened to me. People have helped me that way. I've seen it happen, and maybe you were that way at that time,

[20:26]

and just now you're looking back and being humble. Next time, try to pay attention when that happens. It could happen this afternoon. You never know. Yes? Would you talk a little more about being fully self-expressive and fully present when you're in the ear, where you are on the receiving end? That is, it seems like one thing to say, I'm going to be fully self-expressive and right there over something that essentially is coming from me. Right. And then how do you maintain that presence when somebody else is about to do something to you, be it fully self-expressive or manipulative or hurtful or untruthful? Well, about to is a little hard. Let's start with not about to, but is. Is that okay?

[21:27]

Rather than it's how do I be fully expressive when someone's about to talk to me, how about how do I be fully self-expressive when somebody is talking to me? Well, I don't know. No one knows. But while you were just talking to me a minute ago, I was trying to be fully expressive while you were talking. I was listening to you. Did you see how I did it? Did you see how it happened? How I was being fully expressive while you were talking to me and I was listening to you? No, I couldn't tell whether you were being fully expressive or not. Did you see me? Did it look like I was listening to you? Yes. Did it look like I could have maybe not been listening to you? Yes. I was not trying to look. I was specifically watching out to not look like I was listening. And I was feeling pretty, you know,

[22:31]

I was willing for that to be my life. Okay? I mean, this is your life, Reb Anderson, listening to her talk? Yes? This is okay with me. I'm willing to... That was okay for my life to be that way. This is the way I'm willing to spend Saturday afternoon and on a lovely day listening to you talk. I'm satisfied listening to you talk. That's how I felt. I felt, you know, I didn't feel like I was holding back while you were talking. Does it make any difference to you whether you feel like you're in a safe environment when you're listening? Yes. Everything counts. And the way I would listen to you would be different if, you know, people were attacking me from three directions while you were talking to me. I would listen to you in a different way. I would be interspersing listening with other things. But each one I would feel...

[23:32]

I hope I could feel I was fully expressing myself while being receptive, too. You can be fully expressing yourself, you know, like supposedly acting, but hearing is... listening is acting, too. But the landscape of your mind when you're listening is flat. That's the shape of the mind when you're listening. So the karmic quality of listening is neutral. And if you're... But if you're doing the listening, then the karmic quality of what you're doing when you're listening is neutral because there's no impulse when you're receiving information, your organs are really basically at rest. You're receptive, right? Then in response to receiving information you come into a state of mind which has a landscape and dynamism and apparent action can happen. Okay? But when you're listening fully there's no self doing the listening. So you check this out, okay?

[24:35]

When you're listening, is there a self that's listening? Then it's karma. It's neutral, but it's karma. If you fully listen, does the self drop away? I propose maybe it does. Check it out. What's the difference between kind of listening and having the self here ready, you know, for maybe the next thing they say and, you know, how much longer are they going to talk and, you know, if they talk much longer I'm going to stop listening. All that going on while you're listening. Or like listening and not even keeping track of how long they listened and not even know how much longer you're going to let them talk. And this kind of thing, you know, try to get in there and see how do you listen? And in the same way, when your mind goes into a more active state where your consciousness has these clear shapes and inclinations, is there a self there that's doing, that's connected to this inclination?

[25:37]

And then does full expression bring the self into, draw the self into the expression and have the self drop away? Because this expression is so full. So in both receptive and expressive, I shouldn't say receptive, in both receptive and active can you have full expression? And in both cases does the self drop away? Do you have that feeling? And so in this example we're not sure where she was yelling at her boss whether in the full expression the self dropped away or not. And I also propose just that it may be the case that when you're fully receptive, okay, so fully expressing receptivity, the self drops away and that might lead, again, to an active moment of full expression where the self drops away too. Being really receptive, really active, really receptive, really active, those can follow each other in full expression. And the self,

[26:39]

in addition to your life. Can you be fully receptive and be formulating your next expression at the same time? Or might there be ten minute gaps in a conversation because you the other person's finished talking? Sure, you can do that. You can be fully or even you can be while you're talking. Okay? I can be listening to you, fully listening to you, fully expressing myself, feeling like some people really are like virtuoso listeners. I mean they're fantastic listeners. I mean like they are they are a blessing on the world the way they listen. It's the best thing they do is they're listening. There's a story about two Chinese guys. One was a lute player and the other one was a listener. And the lute player

[27:41]

used to play the lute for this listener. He played for other people too but he mainly played for this one guy because when this guy listened to him he could really play the lute. It's like a muse, right? And then the guy died and he tore the strings of his lute out because nobody you know nobody could listen like that. He couldn't play anymore. So listening can be like a transcendent act when you give yourself completely to it. Okay? And you can get that good at listening so you transcend your egoistic concerns you know and you just give your whole life and some people are like that. They go to concerts and like they love to go to concerts because they can really give themselves to these artists. Just give their ear. And their whole body just goes just one just two big ears and there's no self. And they get to they get to be free of self for a little while. The artist gets to play to a selfless being

[28:42]

and it's beautiful, right? It's a great thing in this world. However right in the middle of that kind of listening even while the person is still talking you can just flat out stop listening to them and start thinking about menus for dinner or whatever you want. In fact some people do. And you can wholeheartedly stop listening to them and fully express not listening to them and you can tell them or not. You can say I just want to tell you that I'm going to stop listening to you now for three minutes. You can keep talking if you want to but I'm going to take a little break. Now if you're really a great listener the person might say well I think I'll stop too then because I just love it when you're listening to me and it's not really worth talking when you're not listening. I sometimes tell people this you may not know it but when you're not around if you all left I wouldn't sit here and keep talking like that. You might

[29:44]

because you don't know when you're gone what I do, right? But actually you all leave here I just sit here quietly I don't do this by myself. It's a kind of response. When people listen like you do I talk like this. And if you all said to me you can keep talking, Rev but we'd all like to we're just going to think about something else for a little while. We're all going to just like you know be concentrating on our breathing and posture for about ten minutes now. So we just want you since we care about you we just want to know what's happening with us, okay? I would stop. Partly not just because I didn't want to bother you but because I'm actually talking to you. So I think if you're in the middle of really listening to somebody wholeheartedly fully expressing yourself not karma even at that point actually in selfless meditation of listening so wholeheartedly that if you decide to selflessly

[30:44]

wholeheartedly not listen to them and think about something else I think it'd be great to say that's what's happening for me now that's what I'm going to do. That'd be great. And then they probably probably would stop because if you're listening to them that way they probably feel it on some level. And it's okay. There's many ways to wholeheartedly express yourself many, you know like many. Anything that's happening is an opportunity for wholehearted expression and in wholehearted expression the self drops away and when the self drops away it's not karma anymore. There are two kinds of in terms of the study of karma there's two kinds of of meditation practice. Now I said I said in terms of karma what I mean is today we're talking about karma

[31:45]

so I wanted to say in that context there's two kinds of meditation practice. One you could call karmic and the other you could call non-karmic or worldly and the other you could call I don't like the term but super mundane or beyond of karma. Two kinds of meditation. In one kind of meditation one still is meditating based on the belief of independent existence. The other kind either one does not believe

[32:46]

in that independence anymore or at least at the moment the meditation practice puts aside the nature of the meditation practice puts aside or drops self-interest for the moment. One the first kind of meditation practice could be called selfish meditation practice. The second kind of meditation is called selfless. I would call selfless meditation practice. Okay, those are two types. Within each type there's a wide variety of meditation practices possible. But from the point of view of our discussion of karma today there's those two types. Okay.

[33:48]

The second type is actually Buddhist meditation. Although in Buddhist texts the first type will be taught so that people who still are involved in karma and who still believe that they independently exist will be able to have some access to Buddhist practice. So in a sense the practice you do before you're enlightened to some extent is this worldly mundane selfish meditation practice. It's something that you do. I meditate. I practice Zen. I concentrate. I practice mindfulness. There's that kind of practice. There's another kind of practice which is, you know it's the practice of what's happening. It's not something you do. Now if you

[34:49]

if you have completely dropped the belief that you exist independent of the rest of the world then quite naturally any meditation practice which you're involved in will be selfless because you just that's the way you understand the world is as a selfless event. So your meditation practice is selfless meditation. But it's possible even before you uproot your, you know kind of like your your very deeply entrenched belief in your independent existence even before you uproot that and completely are free of it you can still experience and realize a meditation practice which is basically basically selfless because the self maybe can't even get a can't even get a hold on it.

[35:52]

And probably a number of you greater than zero have had moments of experience in such meditation practice in your life. Quite a few women in the room and I would guess that some of the women in the room while they were delivering their children at some point in the process they experienced a selfless meditation. There was a moment there probably at some point maybe several moments where there was just the birth process and that was it. It was such a such a full expression of life that the self sort of couldn't you know couldn't take credit for it for a little while. Couldn't like couldn't think in terms of

[36:56]

I'm doing this delivery process. And meditation on karma the awareness the simple awareness of this process of somebody who thinks she is doing this or somebody who thinks she is meditating who is approaching meditation as something she does but the simple awareness of that of that approach and seeing oh this is a karmic approach she thinks she is meditating that awareness itself is selfless or can be. Of course you can call up that awareness too and say I'm doing the awareness of me of me doing things but it can just be simply aware that you're up to such and such a karma.

[37:57]

That also that practice is you know in a sense is selfless. So study of karma is not necessarily karma so you can right away you know you can immediately start doing a meditation practice which is not more karma but is actually learning about karma learning about karma doesn't have to be more karma you do not have to think of that as something you do and in fact it can be that way. In a way even before you're completely free of your of the long standing human entrenched belief in independent existence even before that whenever you fully express yourself yourself whenever you fully express yourself that full expression is a moment of selflessness because the self always wants to be like

[39:00]

you know negotiating and monitoring and making sure that your expression is going to be okay or not when you believe in self you have an ego there which is always like trying to check to make sure that what you're doing is going to work out okay for this imagined independent self but when you fully express yourself the ego is not there anymore negotiating and saying I wonder if this is okay or not I wonder if this is going to work out alright or not I wonder what effect this is going to have so I was talking to some people during the lunch break about this

[40:00]

that this is part of the it's kind of ironic this quality that full expression is not karma full expression is non-manipulative and I used the example of like listening to someone sometimes I was talking to someone whose son went to talk last night and I didn't know whether he was paying attention or not turns out he was but I couldn't tell if you're really listening to somebody you don't necessarily look like you're listening you might be like listening to somebody like you never listened to anybody before like your whole being is just an ear and there's not even anybody there listening it's just total listening and you might look like you're totally distracted you might be like looking out the window and shaking or something

[41:00]

who knows what you look like you're not into what you look like you're into listening and your body does whatever you know it's like the body kind of goes I don't know what I don't know what it would do that's not the point you're not you're not maneuvering anymore you're just like total listening and there was this guy who made this movie it's called The Thin Blue Line did you ever hear of that movie? anyway it's a movie where this guy interviewed various individuals who were involved in a you know in a murder that occurred in Texas and it's a it's a fascinating study but I read an article in the New Yorker about this guy who does he makes documentaries the guy who made this movie and he interviews people so he's interviewing and has a camera on them and he finds that if you if you feed people's narcissistic tendencies while you're interviewing them they some people get so

[42:01]

you know brought up by this narcissistic feeding frenzy that they start telling you the truth they get you know they get so excited about getting so much attention from the camera and from the interviewer that they just like they actually start saying the truth and he actually got this guy he interviewed this guy in this movie and got this guy who did the murder to confess during the film and this other guy who didn't who didn't kill him who didn't commit the murder was actually in prison for the murder that this other guy had committed and he got the real murder to confess on in this movie because he fed him you know so so well so overabundantly fed his his narcissistic needs so fundamentally the guy basically confessed and when the government officials

[43:02]

heard about this film they said they could see it but they said and there was more data in the film besides that he got other people to tell the truth too he got other witnesses to tell the truth in the film so basically the film showed got a bunch of people who had been lying to tell the truth on the film regular commercial film commercial documentary and when the government officials saw this the law enforcement people they said we can't like reverse this decision based on a movie but you know they finally did they finally realized that they had to recognize this even though they didn't usually do it and the guy got released from prison on the basis of this film and this film showed that various other kinds of evidence had been withheld and stuff like that and various other people had lied about various things and so on and so forth the film showed that the legal process did whatever it had to do and released the guy from prison the other guy who was the actual murderer

[44:03]

and so on and so forth who confessed during this film was in prison for some other murders anyway so it didn't make much difference to him but anyway the interviewer said that when you're interviewing people if you want to give them the impression that you're listening you shouldn't necessarily be listening the way you would look if you were listening it does not necessarily seem to them to look like you're listening so you should stop listening to them and make the face that looks like you're listening and then the tape recorder and the camera will get what they said and you don't have to hear it all you have to do is look like you're listening and then they'll tell you the truth so in other words if he was fully expressing himself he would say he would say you know I'm looking like I'm listening to you but I'm not really I'm just trying to get you to you know tell me the truth so I'm going to look at you in a way that will make you feel comfortable and you'll start spilling the beans to me that would be full self-expression probably but then the guy

[45:05]

wouldn't tell you right and if you actually like were just plain listening to him also not trying to manipulate him or get him to tell you the truth but you're actually just listening to him with no manipulative agenda he might not think you're listening to him now some people when they listen to you they look like they're listening to you but a lot of people I think wouldn't necessarily look like they're listening to you when they really were and sometimes I when I really want to listen to people sometimes I tell them I'm going to go into a I'm going to make a face now because I really want to listen to you and if I make this face I can hear you better but that does not mean I'm asleep I really want to hear this you know so you know and I make and then when I tell them that beforehand then they they aren't shocked by the face they see and then they keep talking but again if you if you fully express yourself you you put aside your manipulation your manipulation manipulation agenda and just express and that's not karma

[46:08]

you do not do you do not do full expression you can't do full expression because if you're doing it you're not fully there when you fully express you put aside the monitoring ego the acting power and just express so when you do meditation you know sort of the prototypic zen meditation which we call just sitting that means you completely are just sitting I say you are just sitting but it's not something you do it's like full self-expression and you don't you're so fully doing it you can't you can't be outside it and it's not karma and when you're fully aware of what you're doing that awareness of what you're doing even while you're still involved in karma somebody's like very busy blah blah blah blah you know but the awareness of that is not doing anything and that's that meditation on this person who's on this trip can be liberating

[47:09]

and then liberating means you actually become free of the basis of the karma so then you get transformed actually and you're not even doing any karma anymore but you can do non-karmic meditation while you're doing karma or while you're doing karmic meditation so you don't have to wait to be enlightened before you start doing you know actually enlightening meditation this is kind of hard to understand but I thought I might mention that does this make sense to you? it's a surprising idea to people that full expression is non-manipulative not where you say well how about if I wanted to manipulate could could trying to manipulate be a full self

[48:10]

a full expression of self it's hard it's hard for me to imagine that that it would that it could be I have trouble seeing how it could be like if I say to you I would like to manipulate you I would like to get you to do such and such you know first of all I want you to do such and such you know I want you to do this I want you to walk across the room and I tell you that but that isn't necessarily going to get you to walk across the room that's full self expression I really want you to do that let's say but it doesn't necessarily get you to go across the room I want you to know and I want you to know that I want you to do that I want to let you know this is how I'm feeling I want you to walk across the room that's not particularly

[49:11]

I mean, it's not manipulative. I'm not telling you that to get you to walk across the room. Not that I want to get you to walk across the room. I think I'm, you know, I'm very well going to tell you anything about myself or show it at all. And if I want to hurt you, to tell you that I want to hurt you is not necessarily going to hurt you. If I want to hurt you, it might be better to sort of keep it to myself and look for the opportunity to hurt you. And even then, even if I hurt you, I still might not fully express my feeling of wanting to hurt you. Even though I'm successful at hurting you, I still may be unsatisfied. But it might be, actually, that if I wanted to hurt you, I feel I want to hurt you, and if I just fully express that, it might be all over. It's possible. It's possible, since most desire to hurt people comes from lack of full self-expression.

[50:20]

Lack of full self-expression keeps us trapped in the prison of self. Full self-expression liberates us, because when you fully express yourself, you can become free of yourself. If you don't fully express yourself, you can't see yourself, and if you can't see yourself, you can't become free of yourself. This is a principle about studying the fundamental... Basically, one of the fundamental criteria for karma is this belief in self, but you can't become free of that if you don't get yourself out in front of you, and you can't get yourself out in front of you if half yourself's hiding back in you. But if you're concerned for yourself, it's hard to express yourself fully, because what will happen to you if you express yourself fully? You might get in big trouble for it, and you might. You might get in big trouble for it, so it's dangerous.

[51:23]

So we have to start to gradually figure out situations where we can somehow safely fully express ourselves. Some people will... it's possible some people will hurt us if we fully express ourselves, partly because people often get angry when they see someone fully express themselves because they want to do it too, but they don't dare. So they sometimes punish you for doing it because they feel jealous that you can do it, and they can't. So you need to deal with people, I think not need to, but it's safer to start with people who want you to do that. People who love you, and who won't use your full self-expression against you, won't use your revealing yourself to them against you. Or people who, if they do use it against you, you can say, I don't want you to use that against me. Don't do that again.

[52:26]

When I tell you, when I show you myself, don't use my openness with you against me. I don't want you to do that. And gradually you can develop a relationship where you can express yourself fully. You don't need somebody else around to do it necessarily though, you can do it alone. In your own heart you can say, I really want to do this, or I really want to do that. So again, this is part about how you study the self, is through full self-expression. You can't learn who you are, and you can't study yourself and see what you are and become free of who you think you are if you don't show yourself to yourself. And you can't see yourself if you're holding back alone and interpersonally. So I would guess that this is surprising or difficult to understand, so if you have some questions about that, you can bring them up now if you like. Yes?

[53:32]

If you fully express your rage and you kill someone, it doesn't have consequences if it's a really full expression and you lose yourself in that process? Fully expressing yourself, you say rage, but you have this impulse to kill, you want to kill someone? You're thinking of killing someone? And then you think full expression is to kill them? No, not necessarily. You have the impulse to kill. Full expression might be, I have the impulse to kill so and so. And I was thinking, if you fully express your anger and it melts into a rage object, and there's a passion on it, you kill someone. Well, you didn't fully express yourself then. Okay? Maybe I should start with the murder in the first place, okay?

[54:34]

If you are killing someone, if you're in the process of treating someone in such a way that they might die, and let's say then they do die, your interaction with them is so violent that they die, okay? And that in the process of doing that, you fully express yourself, okay? You could be liberated at that moment of murdering them, okay? And it wouldn't be karma. But, is it possible to be violent with someone and be fully present and fully expressing yourself? Is that possible? You know, really, do you have the meditative ability to be completely present, completely loving, completely mindful, completely balanced, and be violent towards another living being? Can you do that? I think it's very, very unlikely that you could really completely be there, completely loving to yourself, and therefore to the other person, and somehow be that violent.

[55:48]

I'm talking about a situation where you're already in the act, okay? The act's already happening. Let's not talk about leading up to it, but the act itself. But if you could be that present, that selfless, and that happened, okay, there would not be any self doing it. And it would not be murder, and it would be liberating. And, you know, the example that comes to my mind was, you know, if you, I don't know what, if you, you know, were somehow, if you fell off of a ladder and fell down on somebody and hit them violently and they died, you know, that would be an interaction between you and someone else that would be, you know, a full experience. And if you were present for that, you would be liberated, right at that moment, and they would die. But you would not be intending to kill them. And you could be liberated. Now, if you fell off a ladder and fell on someone and hurt them or killed them, and you weren't present, you wouldn't be liberated by that.

[56:59]

Because you could be self, all the way down, you'd be concerned, am I going to get hurt now, you know, or am I going to hurt them, you know, am I going to get in trouble for this, if they die, will I be, you know, all that kind of thing, just more selfishness. Or, you know, going down, and I would like to hurt them, and so this is not it either. So, I'm saying, yeah, but it's very unlikely that you could have the thought, I'm going to kill them, and I want to kill them, and I am going to kill them, and somehow do that fully and still hold on to yourself, and have it be a karmic act. And take a step back from that, where you hate somebody, if you fully express that hate, your self drops away, and it just becomes the pure, the complete expression of hatred. But then it's not a self behind it, and there's no tendency to want to hurt, it's just an expression of rage. And such a rage is very similar to a volcano, or what do you call it, a forest fire, or whatever.

[58:06]

In the full expression, you drop away from the situation. Your rage is emptied of self, and it probably wouldn't hurt anybody, you know. As a matter of fact, the people who are receiving your rage, if it was directed towards some individual, you're saying, I hate you, or I don't like what you're doing, or I would like to kill you, you know, whatever like that. In that full self-expression, there's no I there anymore. Because the I that would say that is not protecting herself anymore, and she's not trying to get anything, she's totally vulnerable, so vulnerable that she's not even concerned with herself anymore, so there's no self-clinging. And the person you're talking to might be very, very educated by what you say to them. It might be very helpful to them to see somebody who's expressing rage, but there's no self-clinging there.

[59:12]

Like Manjushri. Like Manjushri. Like what we call wrathful deities. They're helpful. They're not like a person over there who's on some trip to do something to us. They're a deity, they're a divine expression of terrific, they sometimes say wrathful, but in other words, terrific deities. Deities of terror. They're terrifying us. They're kind of like, wake up! You know? But if there's a self there that's doing this harsh terrifying thing, well, then it's not full self-expression. Full self-expression, the self is thrown into the expression. There's nothing left over outside pushing it. Even if it's rage. And without the intention of harm? Definitely without the intention of harm, but if there is the intention of harm, then it's another one. I want to harm you. I feel the impulse to harm you. But for me to honestly, completely tell you that, means in some sense, I love you.

[60:15]

If I want to harm you, I'm not going to tell you I want to harm you. With my whole heart. If I want to harm you, I'm going to hold back and be quiet and wait for my opportunity to harm you. If you're a warrior, and you want to hurt somebody, you don't show them what's going on with you. If you want to kill somebody, you don't show them beforehand. You just play it cool, you don't tell them anything, and then... At the right moment, when you won't get hurt, and nobody's watching, stick it in. No self-expression, nobody even knows you did it. Don't get much kick out of it. Except you hurt them. And you don't learn much about yourself either, because you can't even enjoy it and say, Boy, that was good to see that. No. You accomplished the evil deed. You did. You hurt the person, but you don't even know who did it.

[61:16]

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