in one of the lines of the poem celebrating this story was, one translation would be, where can the dust arise in the gate of compassion? And dust means like subject and separation between self and other. That's a dust. Like dust is like when things kind of like irritate your eye. When beings are external, they kind of hurt your eyes. That's duality. And it's stressful. So it's normal that if you turn the wheel one way or the other, if you make any statement, then these, like student and teacher, that can turn into dust. That can turn into duality. We were just talking about that, right? Pardon? If you turn the wheel, you sort of go towards this or that.

[01:03]

So the simplest way is don't turn the wheel. Just show the wheel without turning it. That's what he did. The student came and said, I don't want to hear about talk. I don't want to hear about words or no words. And he's saying, please don't turn the wheel. Show me the wheel without turning it. And the Buddha did. And he understood. He understood. So then the poem says, if you turn the wheel, then you turn into two ways. You turn into duality. And then you have a mirror which reflects things as separate, and you have ugliness discriminated or divided from beauty. This is an example of duality. But then it says, but in the gate of compassion, where can duality arise? So if we bring compassion to duality, it doesn't really arise. It's not a problem. You don't have to get rid of it. You can look at it and see, well, it doesn't really happen.

[02:09]

So we bring compassion to duality, and then duality is not a problem, even if it arises. And by bringing compassion to duality, we can also accept a teaching where there's no movement of the teaching. where the teacher doesn't teach us anything. And yet we realize without teaching anything, we're still in this close friendship with the teacher. But a lot of people say, I can't believe you're teaching me anything because you don't do anything. So would you do something? And the teacher says, okay. And the teacher does something. And they say, good. And now we've got duality. And then after a while, the student gets used to, okay, you don't have to do anything anymore. We can just be together. Because that's where the practice happens. But like some people, just the shadow of the whip's enough. They don't need any more than that.

[03:12]

Other people, it needs to touch. And then there's some duality to work with. Maybe they need that. Yes. Yeah. Well, the first talk, I think even before the Buddha they had this idea of a wheel. India like a wheel of the way things evolve like they had the idea of the wheel by which things go from human to animal from birth to death and then the Buddha used the image of the wheel of the teaching the Dharma wheel his first talk was setting the Dharma wheel rolling so the

[04:13]

The teaching is often called the wheel. And the Buddha turns the teaching. But this story is saying sometimes the wheel doesn't really turn. But out of compassion, sometimes the wheel is turned because people don't see it unless it turns. So the Buddha turns it. But it doesn't really turn. Reality doesn't exactly turn. The teaching doesn't really turn, but the Buddha turns it when people say that they need it. Just like sometimes the horse gets touched harder and harder before it understands what's being asked. Yes, So when the horse is touched to the bone, are you talking, are you saying, is the Buddha saying that there's a realization of truth in death?

[05:35]

Or as one is presented with death or going through the process of death, that reality is shown? I thought you said the same thing twice. Perhaps. Anyway, it's the case that a lot of people, when they're dying, they open to the teaching. and they didn't do it before. But in a sense, almost everybody opens to the teaching at the moment of death unless it's really traumatic and violent, when it's really hard to observe what's going on if things are really thrown into tremendous violence. That's why it's often appreciated to die peacefully, because dying peacefully, we have a better chance to hear the true Dharma. And a lot of people, anyway, seem to hear it in the dying process, seem to stop resisting.

[06:43]

They're not trying to get more work done. They're just trying to receive and give compassion. in their sickness and their resistance. Like one of our friends who died recently here named Fred Murath. He was diagnosed with a very fatal disease, went to the hospital, and then something happened there. And he said, and he told me, I was talking to him on the telephone, he was in the hospital, he said, something happened I want to tell you about, very important. I don't know if he said miracle, but anyways, something really important happened, something amazing. So I went to see him. When I was talking on the telephone, he said, you want me to come now? And he said, not now because there's so much activity here. But in a few days, it'll quiet down so we can be alone and I can tell you about this.

[07:49]

So I went to see him. You know, Fred, I went to see him and he said, I always say no. And I resist everything. And I push everything away. But after I got the diagnosis, I stopped resisting. I stopped pushing away. And he said, but then when they started to get into giving me some treatment and so on, it came back. So anyway, sometimes the teaching of death helps us stop resisting the reality that's with us, the Buddha that's with us, the friendship that's with us. And then sometimes we stop seeing that teaching and

[08:53]

And then we start resisting again and don't accept the teaching that's being given. That make sense? Do you still have some question about that? Yes. Would you use this? Why are there so many beings who are suffering and in need of enlightenment? Why is that the case? Well, I can tell you a story. Want to hear a story? Sure. The story is that living beings who have consciousness, we call them living beings, There's design flaws in the consciousness. Consciousness is wonderful. It enables us to learn, for example. And one of the things it enables us to learn is that consciousness has design flaws.

[09:59]

One of the main design flaws of consciousness is that it appears to itself as not itself. So in consciousness, things appear, which consciousness knows, and those things often look like not consciousness, even though it's consciousness. So, for example, in my consciousness now, there is an appearance of Barry that looks like not my consciousness. That's a design flaw. Consciousness doesn't tell us that the way it's appearing to itself is actually constructed by itself. It hides the construction process. And there's good reasons for that. Because it takes energy to tell people not only here's what's being constructed, but also it is being constructed. Matter of fact, all you need to know is that there's an appearance of Barry. That's all you need to know right now. We don't need to tell you how we presented that to you.

[10:59]

So because of not understanding consciousness, we tend to think that what's appearing there is not, which is a mistake. So we tend to be afraid of what's appearing in our own consciousness, which is stressful, and so on. That's the story about why everybody who has consciousness suffers until they understand the nature of that process. Why are we here? Why are there so many beings here? I don't know why there's so many beings here at all, but consciousness is very useful for living beings' survival process. So it's part of life for many living beings to have consciousness. Not all living beings, not all life has consciousness.

[12:03]

Life has cognition, but not all cognition is conscious. Some cognitions do not have things appearing within the cognitive process. That's called unconscious process. Many beings have unconscious process, but not consciousness. And they don't suffer. And they're not afraid. They don't hate. They just function in their living way with their cognitive processes. And it's also maybe the case that some living beings don't have cognitive processes. They have body working with body without giving rise to cognitive process. But we have body, cognitive process, and consciousness. And consciousness is where we can learn about the suffering that occurs in consciousness. Yes. Yes.

[13:06]

You're curious about what? You're curious about what? Yeah. Yeah. Some people hearing about it might not be sufficient, so they have to sort of start, in a sense, feel, start to feel it, or you might say experience it. But the Buddha actually sometimes can help people feel, if necessary, the Buddha can sometimes help people feel like they're dying in order to help them. to not just say, well, you know, there's death, but actually kind of show it. One of the ways Buddhists can show it, like I said before, some people hear about death in, for example, they hear about death in some other community, not even in their own village, and they wake up.

[14:47]

Some people see it in their own village, and they wake up. But they didn't wake up just hearing about it in the next village. Some people hear about it in their village, but they don't wake up. They hear about it in other villages, and they don't wake up. But when their mother dies, they wake up. So like one of the founders in our tradition, the first ancestor in the Japanese section of our lineage, when he was Five, his father died. But that didn't have the same effect on him. He saw his father's death, but it didn't touch him very much. But when his mother died, and he was seven, and he was watching her and watching the incense arise near her, the wish, the practice arose in him and pretty much was brightly shining for the rest of his life.

[15:51]

So for him, but some other kid might be watching her mother die and somehow not be touched enough. So then they maybe, when they're older maybe, without sort of themselves getting sick or something, they might be, maybe the Buddha could, the teacher could somehow show them, you know, like hang them by their, feet over a cliff or something. That's often used in mountainous areas. But without actually hanging them over the cliff, sometimes a person can talk to you in such a way that you feel really touched. And other methods didn't work. So now we have a more dramatic experience of something that touches more deeply. And so you are having the experience, even if you're not necessarily literally dying.

[16:55]

It's something of that strength that sometimes the good friendship can show you if you need it. And a lot of us do need something pretty strong sometimes in order to make us wake up and say, I do want to practice. And then follow through on it because it's a real deep encouragement. Yes? It means peace and freedom and wisdom and the wish to share this peace and freedom with other beings who have not yet received the teaching.

[17:59]

It's to be filled with great liberating compassion, which sets you free and helps you find a way to show others the same process that you went through. It's about liberating life. One of the things I... didn't say this morning, which I had floating around my mind, was when the Buddha talks about old age, sickness, and death, people think that Buddhism's about old age, sickness, and death. But Buddhism's not about old age, sickness, and death. That's just something that Buddha talks about to liberate life. Buddhism's about life. But a lot of people who are alive are very contracted in their consciousness. and confused and frightened. So this is a teaching for living beings to open their, to liberate their life from the constraints of their consciousness. That's the point.

[19:04]

It's about life. But again, a lot of people who are alive are really confined and suffocated by their mind And so the teaching is to open the mind up so that the life can blossom. And the teaching has to be suited for the person. It sometimes takes a while for the friendship to find the right teaching. Even the historical Buddha didn't necessarily find the right teaching immediately, or even if he found the right teaching, it took a while for it to take effect. The person had to practice it for a while for it to work. Even though it was the right teaching, they had to apply it for a while before the tumblers fell in place. Sometimes the Buddha could wake people up like that. There are occasions like that where somebody came and woke up in about two minutes.

[20:11]

Anything else? Yes? Hello. Hello. I'm trying to understand, for an enlightened being, it seems like the process of enlightenment is the process of freeing ourselves of our karmic consciousness. And it's that abiding in our karmic consciousness that causes suffering. Mm-hmm. Abiding in it as in, you know, believing that the way things appear are the way they are. That's kind of abiding in it. And then you also said that animals that don't have a karmic consciousness, they don't suffer. Yeah, they don't suffer.

[21:18]

Nothing like the way we suffer in consciousness. They have positive and negative sensation maybe. Mm-hmm. But some animals, without consciousness, they don't hate anybody for it. Right. And they're not planning to take revenge on anybody. Or even someone would say, well, they're eating that stuff over there. That's pretty mean. But they're not doing it out of meanness. They're doing it out of hunger. Right. They're not trying. They don't think anybody else is causing them problems. They don't have vendettas. They don't think other religions are inferior to theirs. They don't have any of that stuff, I would say. They do have feelings, though. And for those who have consciousness, who are trapped in consciousness, for us to be kind to beings who do not have consciousness, we should be kind to beings who don't have consciousness and those who do. For those who are living in consciousness, there's no real opportunity for wasting time.

[22:20]

There's no real encouragement to waste any opportunity to practice compassion, even for beings who aren't suffering as much as us. So it isn't like they're suffering less, so I don't practice compassion towards them. I only practice it towards people who are suffering a lot. We don't have any time to waste. But some beings are suffering less because they have not done such terrible things. So what I'm wondering is what's the difference between an animal that doesn't have karmic consciousness and an enlightened being that has freed themselves of karmic consciousness? Because both seem free of karmic consciousness. An enlightening being can use karmic consciousness to help other unenlightened karmic consciousnesses. Okay. The Buddha is free of karmic consciousness and that freedom, that wisdom emanates to the beings who have karmic consciousness, which they convert into their own karmic stuff.

[23:29]

So the Buddha sends the light of wisdom, which is free of karmic consciousness, and it touches living beings who convert that teaching into the stuff of karmic consciousness, which is like words. Karmic consciousness is full of words for human beings. So they convert Buddha's wisdom into words, and Buddha's okay with that. And Buddha's also said, fine, I had to use words to get out of there too, or to be free of it, I should say. So the experiential difference for a Buddha versus an animal... Because they're both free of karmic consciousnesses that the Buddha has had to pass through consciousness and become free of it and gain the wisdom to then be able to assist other living things. Yeah. And some people are free of stuff, but they never even run into the things. You could say they're free of them, but their freedom doesn't exactly mean anything because they just don't have it.

[24:31]

Like poor people, you could say, are free of wealth, but if you gave them the wealth, they might find suddenly they're not free anymore. So it... The problems, some problems we have not yet dealt with. Right. But the fact that we haven't dealt with them doesn't exactly mean we're free of them. But some problems that we haven't dealt with, when we get to them, we may be able to deal with them skillfully, and then we are free of them. That's why you sort of need to use the whip to see if beings can deal with hearing this stuff without getting hung up on it. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. Can you come up here? I can't hear you. I was wondering if you could say something about the unconscious, if it feels really out of control, and taming it and feeling safe and contained.

[25:43]

Oh, I'm very soft spoken. I was wondering if you, I'm really shy, if you could say something about the unconscious and taming it and feeling contained and safe. I think I would say that by practicing compassion in consciousness, the unconscious is transformed in such a way that it will then support more conscious practice of compassion. The unconscious doesn't really have the ability to practice compassion. But it supports the arising of consciousness. And in consciousness we can practice compassion or not. When you practice compassion in your consciousness, your unconscious processes are immediately transformed.

[26:46]

When you practice unkindness in consciousness, your unconscious processes are immediately transformed. But consciousness transforms the unconscious cognitive process in such a way that it supports more conscious practice of compassion. And the more compassion that is practiced in consciousness, the more feeling of ease and safety and confidence in compassion. Until finally it's possible that you really are confident that compassion is better than cruelty. And that nothing can happen that will knock you off the compassion practice. But you have to practice for quite a while to get to the point where you're so convinced that you'll do anything to help beings and you will do nothing to hurt them. And to have that kind of consciousness, you have to transform the unconscious a lot. But if you practice compassion and consciousness over and over and over, your unconscious will support the creation of a consciousness that cannot be knocked off of compassion.

[27:58]

That's the very optimistic proposal. And that proposal, however, includes the message that it's only by doing this over and over many, many times that the support for such a consciousness can be developed. But it is also saying, if you do do it over and over many times, you will be able to be that way. You start with yourself. You start with yourself and you practice on yourself and you learn to do the same with others. You practice compassion towards your own fear and feeling of unsafetiness and so on. That transforms your unconscious processes which support you to practice more kindness towards your own fear, your own and all your troubles, and then also to practice it towards the appearance of others' troubles in your consciousness. You don't reject anything.

[29:00]

You don't reject anything. You learn to not reject anything, but to embrace all things. You learn that. Okay, thank you very, very much. You've been helpful. You're welcome. Anything else this morning? Yes? It's actually not morning anymore. It's now 12.15 p.m. Thank you. So, Buddha is not separate from any being, right? Buddha is not separate from any being. That's what I say. And also, no beings are separate from Buddha. Right. And no beings are separate from any other being. And no beings are separate from any other beings. Everybody's interdependent, mutually supporting.

[30:02]

But some beings think they are separate. But Buddhas don't believe that. Okay, so when there is an observance of human, animal, tree, grass, rock, none of those are separate. Even if they appear separate, that's an illusion. Yeah. That's duality. So it looks like this tree is separate from that tree, or this is an ugly tree and this is a beautiful tree. That's duality. But with compassion, this duality finds no foothold. You don't have to get rid of it, It's just an illusion. And the illusion opens up, and we sigh in admiration. So this animal with no karmic consciousness is not separate.

[31:18]

Right? And doesn't think it's separate. And doesn't think it's separate. And can't think it's separate. And can't think it's separate. Not yet anyway. It'd have to evolve in order to do that. Evolve into what? Somebody that can have the appearance of separation. Is that evolve in a Darwinian sense, i.e. getting better then? That being would have to evolve quite a bit to be able to imagine separation. And yet, we chant that... Now the words are gone. But at one point we chant, and in the chant we mention liberation for all beings and the great earth together.

[32:19]

And so that would seem to suggest that it is actually possible for a non-karmic consciousness to be liberated. Yeah, but... Well, it suggests that, but in a way, the way it would be liberated is that in its relationship with somebody who was not liberated before. So if there's human beings and the earth, the earth gets liberated by the people who weren't liberated getting liberated because the earth was never in bondage. The only way that the earth is in bondage is, for example, by us being in bondage. I just find that really sort of like really concerning because it seems to be sort of saying that we as human beings, conscious human beings with the karmic consciousness are somehow more than other beings.

[33:39]

We are more than in that we have problems that they don't have. We think we have problems. We think we have problems, and we think they don't have it. Like, for example, the parents have problems paying taxes that the children don't have. Yeah, I think that's slightly different. That's what I'm saying, though. You can have problems that other people don't have. And if you become liberated from your problems, for example, not everybody is a heroin addict. Not everybody has that problem. But when that person becomes free of that problem, that can help other people. And that person had more problems, had a problem that the other people didn't have. But they aren't better than the other people by having more problems. It's just that they have their work to do.

[34:40]

And some other people do not have that work to do. That's the way it's meant. It's meant that these beings have problems that these other people don't. These other beings do not. Still, when these beings are free of their problems, they will have a different relationship with the beings who don't have that problem. When they're free of these problems, they will be able to be more compassionate towards all beings. including the beings that did not have the problem, but they've just become free of. Yeah. That's the way it's meant. Right. I didn't feel that hope before. I was picking up that there was a subtle separation which had to do with higher beings and lower beings, and that concerned me. in a way, certain beings are able to conceive of being higher than other beings.

[35:47]

So those beings have a precept to not think of themselves as higher than other beings. But you don't have to teach that precept to people who can't imagine it in the first place. Now I'm getting mixed up between people and beings. I mean, I can't. Just say beings. Right. Some beings cannot imagine that they're superior to anyone. Yeah. So you don't have to teach them not to do that. Yeah, right. And you don't have to call the people who can think of being superior. You don't have to say that they're superior. No. Just like people who can jump seven feet in the air, you don't have to think of them as superior, that people can only jump about a foot in the air, or people who can't walk. But in fact, they can do things that other people can't do. And therefore, you might have to teach them a precept of not thinking they're better than other people who can't do that. Right. I mean, that's the crux. I think for me the crux of the matter there was just sort of like, as human beings, we are capable of being totally deluded about how much better we are than anything.

[36:58]

Yeah. And I'm suggesting to you that there's some animals that can't think that. Right. So they don't have to have that precept. However, if we practice that precept, we will be kinder to those who don't need it. Sure, but I think, for me anyway, I need to remember all the time, okay, that I am not better just because I can think that, oh, I'm this. You can remember that. That's good. You can remember that you're not better. But also, in addition to remembering that you're not better, also watch for the precept of thinking that you are better. Sure. It's different from thinking than what you just said. No. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Because I can say, I'm not better. And if I think that and believe that, that may push me into thinking that I am better. Right. That's where it comes from. Right. So watch for both of those things. Right, right. But that's the danger of sort of saying that I'm... I have karmic consciousness but that doesn't the danger in that is that we can think of ourselves as being more than or less than which leads to that both ways you're not supposed to slander yourself you're not supposed to put yourself above others you have karmic consciousness you're susceptible to both of those errors

[38:24]

And if you become free of those errors, then you can benefit beings who do not make those errors. And be benefited by them. And you can receive the benefit of them. When we're making these errors, we do not realize that the beings who do not make those errors are helping us and we're helping them. We don't see it. When we don't make these errors, then we see how to help others who don't make these errors and how we're helped by them. Okay. Thank you. Is that enough for this afternoon? Thank you very much.

[39:12]

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