So the bowing in itself is a ritual, is a ceremony to realize, I mean, excuse me, the bowing is a ritual to realize Samantabhadra's vow. You can do the bowing to realize the great Bodhisattva's vow, or your vow, to pay homage to all Buddhas. to express devotion, to exercise devotion by bowing to all Buddhas who are not separate from you. And people practice bowing and oftentimes they have resistance. And as they bow more and more, the resistance to the training melts away. And then finally they tell the story that they're just bowing which includes bowing and bowed to.

[01:07]

Yes, Sarah. Lovely. Thank you. So that's a training. Some people, when they first start doing the training, they have some resistance to the training. For example, to the bowing. They have the vow to pay homage to all Buddhas, but they resist the vow. They resist training in it, which means they resist the vow, maybe, which means they resist their faith, maybe. So again, some people might, you know, I'm totally, on guitar, Sammyak Sambodhi is really most important to me, but I'm too busy to train at that, to like, I don't have time to like train in it.

[02:25]

So I guess it won't get realized, is what I heard anyway. So again, we do the paying homage and and maybe there's some resistance. Some people may start with almost no resistance and then later they have resistance. Like some people at the beginning of an intensive or the beginning of a session have some resistance to participating in the program. and then after a while they get over it. Some people don't have resistance and then later it comes. But again, by continuing even with the resistance, the resistance melts away and then maybe comes back again. And continuing it melts away and maybe comes back again. So paying homage is like that too. Some days there may be resistance to the bowels. Some days there doesn't seem to be. Maybe two forms of resistance would be, I don't want to do the vows as one form.

[03:34]

This is, I don't want to do this. Another one is, I don't want to stop this. And I resist stopping the bowing. And, you know, Also, sitting in the zendo at your seat in your good posture could also be seen as paying homage to the Buddhas. You're sitting like the Buddhas sat, and you're sitting like the Buddhas taught us to sit. So when you sit there, your sitting can be exercising the vow to pay homage to all Buddhas. So while you're sitting you could also be training in Samantabhadra's vow to pay homage to all Buddhas.

[04:48]

So each one of those vows, each one of those vows can be exercised through training And we have scheduled tonight, we're planning tonight to have a ceremony which we sometimes call a bodhisattva initiation ceremony. We sometimes call it bodhisattva precept ceremony. In Japanese it's called tokudo. toku, toku. So, anyatara samyak sambodhi, and then a ritual that we can do to train in anyatara samyak sambodhi is tokudo.

[05:51]

Toku means to attain and do means liberation. Do, the word for the path or practice is also pronounced do, but it's a different character. This character is a character for crossing over. So it's attaining, crossing over, tokudo. There's two types of tokudo. lay, and monastic. In the ceremony, the ceremony starts out, as I mentioned to you before, with paying homage. It actually starts out with Actually, it does start out with paying homage.

[06:58]

It starts out with paying homage by the assembly going to the hall. Going to the hall for the ceremony is paying homage. It could be anyway. But also you could be going to pay homage with resistance. So going to the hall is training in all the Samantabhadra's vows. In particular, you're going to pay homage. I remember one time I was in China in a hotel in the morning and as I was walking out the hotel room, somebody said to me, Are you going to visit your ancestor today?" And I said, mm-hmm. Are you going to pay homage to your ancestor?

[08:00]

Yeah. I was going to the monastery of the sixth ancestor, Hue Nung. And I went there to pay homage to the ancestor. And as soon as I walked through the gate, I started crying. I was so joyful to pay homage to the great, mysterious monk, Hoi Nung. So we start with homage tonight. Then we make offerings. And again, as I mentioned, the praise is kind of implied, but we don't really say that many words of praise. But we do say the names of the Buddhas, we do bow, we do make offerings. And then the next part of the ceremony, which we discussed last time, is renunciation. We practice giving everything away, even the Dharma.

[09:06]

especially the Dharma, the great gift of Dharma. We don't hold on to it. We give it away. We give away our body. We give away our possessions. We give away all our merit. We start with that gesture, with that ritual to exercise. And Samantabhadra's Vows, as I mentioned, doesn't explicitly say to give everything away. And so we could understand, as we said last time, that his vow to make offerings to all Buddhas could be understood as giving everything away. When you sit at your seat, when you enter the zendo, that could be a ritual of giving everything away, of offering to all Buddhas. You're offering your life, your possessions, and your merit every time you go in the zendo, every time you sit. So it's in that way, it's in the ceremony that we'll probably be doing tonight, the tokudo ceremony.

[10:14]

For a lay person, for not a monastic. And then the next part of the ceremony is confession and repentance, which is Samantabhadra's fourth vow to practice confession and repentance. And we do this in the presence of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Their presence is invoked and then we, in their presence, in the presence of those who have great wisdom and compassion, we confess and we repent. And as you know here, during this intensive, every morning we practice confession and repentance. Have you noticed? This is done in the ceremony before receiving the precepts, but after people have received the precepts, they continue to do this practice of confession and repentance, at least a lot of them do.

[11:47]

Samantabhadra vows to continue the practice of confession and repentance until all beings are liberated. And then he goes on to say, well, since all beings are endless, I guess I'll never stop doing this confession and repentance. That's it. He says that for every one of those vows. I'll do these until all beings are blah, blah. But since there's no end to beings, there'll be no end to this practice. And then after doing this practice of confession and repentance, the ordinand is asked if from now on and even after realizing Buddhahood, will you continue this truthful practice of confession and repentance? And the ordinand says, yes, I will. And the verse we say is all my ancient twisted karma.

[12:50]

And the word twisted more literally is evil. for various reasons, which I could guess. At the time of translating into English, twisted was used instead of evil. Another translation is vile, cruel, and so on. Anyway, it's all the bad things I've ever done through body, speech and mind, from beginningless time, from beginningless greed and hate and delusion, I now fully confess and repent." Again, sometimes it's translated as confess, it's a compound, san-ge, San means confess, and ge means confess and repent.

[13:56]

So both meanings are in the compound, confess and repent. Sometimes it's translated just as confess, but that's the way we do it. I now fully avow. But there's a repent character in there too. So sometimes it's translated as I now fully repent. It's both repent and confess. Repent, confess. or repent, reform, another possible translation. Repentance could be seen as reform because it's the type, repentance, the basic meaning of repentance that I found in the English dictionary is sorrow. But it's not sorrow about other people suffering. There is that sorrow. If I see someone that I care about and they're in pain, I'd feel sorrow. probably, but that's not repentance. Repentance is sorrow over my own cruelty, my own inattention, my own, I don't know what, lack of wholeheartedness.

[15:10]

I feel sorry, I feel sorrow that I wasn't wholeheartedly there for you. That's the reforming sorrow. So confession and reform, confession and remedy, confession and repentance. To feel sorry that we weren't wholehearted and to feel reformed in our commitment to be wholehearted. To feel stimulated to be more wholehearted by acknowledging that I wasn't wholehearted. Yes? It seems like most of the time when we talk about confession and repentance here, it feels to me a very private matter before the Buddhas. Do you say private?

[16:12]

Yeah. Oh, you feel it's private. I feel it's public. It's a public one. Yeah, it feels private to me in the sense that none of the specifics are mentioned publicly. Right, the specifics. But we're not confessing the specifics. They're included. But we're saying all of it, not just one, all of it. And in the early days, so if you'd maybe wait, I'll go back to the early ceremony. And I just want to say we confessed it all, not just what I did yesterday or last Tuesday or when I was 14. We're confessing it all, all of them, not like, I did this, this, and this, but also I did much more than that. So it's not excluding that you would practice confession and repentance about a specific, but it isn't just those. It's the ones, the other ones that you maybe don't even know about, all of

[17:15]

what I did on Tuesday into relationship with another living human being. Yeah, okay. And then the all sort of opens up in a way. That's good. That's good. But to just do the individual isn't enough. You have to do the all too. And we do the all in this tradition together in public. Somebody said the origins of Doksan is private interview where you confess. that the early interviews with the teacher were going and confessing particular shortcomings. So that's also part of the practice, is that you would confess particulars. But the ceremony is all of them, and we all do it, except during ordination, just the ordinate, well, you guys can join if you want. and people do have trouble. Some people it's easier to do it in public, general, all of them.

[18:36]

And some people it's easier to do it in public specifically. And some people it's easier, harder to do it in public specifically. And some people it's harder to do it in private specifically. And some people it's harder to do it, all of them, in private. So people have different kinds of resistance to the training program. And so one of the things that I think, I don't know if it's the truth, I don't know if it's true that people who have done AA work or 12-step work before they come to Zen Center maybe are more ready to do that practice But anyway, it's there in 12-step work. And it's also in other areas where people have problems called the Catholic Church. So a lot of people have problems with their experience of confession of particulars from that background.

[19:36]

But there it is. It's the practice. And in the early... Some people say the first, maybe, some people say the first group ceremony of Buddhism was what's called, let's see how this is. It's called upa, you know, upo, vasa, Upavasata. And that's Sanskrit. And in Pali, it's Uposata. And in Chinese, Japanese, it's Fusatsu.

[20:39]

So in the ceremony tonight, we will do the confession and repentance. And then tomorrow night, we will do the fusatsu ceremony, which is a ceremony where we recite the we pay homage, we make offerings, we do a lot of bows, and we recite the precepts, and we also confess all of our ancient twisted karma. But in the early ceremonies, they would recite the precepts, and then if people had specific shortcomings, they would confess them in public. And if someone felt that someone had a specific confession to make and didn't make it, then the other person could say, excuse me, reverend brother or sister, did you want to mention such and such?

[21:49]

And then maybe they would. Specifically, in public, they would mention these things. I don't know if they did all my ancient twisted karma in the early days. But the Mahayana ceremony we're doing, we confess all of our karma in public. And even so-called, whatever, the teacher, the abbot of the temple also doesn't graduate from that practice. It isn't like, well, I don't need to go anymore because I have no shortcomings anymore. even though you may feel you have no shortcomings, that's perhaps a shortcoming. And even if you don't think you have no shortcomings, but you don't, but somebody told you you don't, and they tell you, you don't have to go to the ceremony with those other people, or you can come in after the repentance is over. person might say, but I vowed to continue the practice even after Buddhahood.

[22:56]

And even though Buddhahood's been attained, I will continue the practice of confessing all my ancient twisted karma. If I have no specifics, then I'll just do the ones, all of them. So that's the ceremony that we do tomorrow night. And probably. Confession and repentance. And again, people do often come to see the teacher and confess some shortcoming, like they often say, sorry, I'm a little late. They often come and say that because they often come late. And then they say, a little. And I say, well, why do you say little? is because they're resisting just saying, sorry I'm late. Some people even say, sorry I'm slightly late.

[23:57]

Are you trying to, you know, lessen your confession to make it not much at all? And then also, so that's the advantage of doing it in front of a person is sometimes they respond to you in such a way that you realize you didn't really do it wholeheartedly. And another thing that often happens is people make a confession and the person listening doesn't understand what the problem is. And the problem is they did an abbreviation of what it was. And they weren't trying to hide anything. Consciously they weren't trying to hide anything. They just didn't want to take up too much of the person's time by telling the rest of the story. So then the person who's listening says, well, what's the problem with that? And then they tell the rest of the story. Oh, yeah. When we think of what we do sometimes, we have an abbreviated version of it in our mind.

[25:08]

We know what it's referring to. But if we say the abbreviated version, it doesn't sound like much of a problem. If we tell the whole story, oh, I see. So doing it in front of another person could reveal that we didn't really say the whole story, that we meant to confess. So there's a public and a private confession and repentance. And I also want to mention that there's this sutra, and we don't have this sutra in the Green Gulch Library. We had to borrow it from the City Center Library. It's called the Sutra of Golden Light. Sometimes it's called the Sutra of Sublime Golden Light. And this sutra is very influential in East Asian Buddhism, especially in Japan.

[26:20]

And I don't know, has anybody ever heard or read in Dogen's writing in talking about this sublime golden light sutra? Maybe he did, but he talks about other sutras much more. But this is a very influential sutra that he didn't mention to us was very influential in the Buddhist world he lived in. I don't know in Japanese. It's Sanskrit's Survana Bhasha Sottama Sutra. I don't know what it is in Japanese, but I can easily find it for you. It's a Mahayana sutra. Very influential. And I'm bringing it up because the heart of the sutra, it is said, is the chapter on confession and repentance.

[27:32]

So this sutra, the influence of the sutra is coming, the light of the sutra is coming through the practice of confession and repentance. So basically one of the things the sutra says is that by confessing once all your ancient unskillful, unkind, etc., karma, by doing it once,

[28:52]

I think it's understood in the context of before the Buddhas. But anyway, just saying to do it once removes all your ancient twisted karma. And an expanded version of that is to do it once by the power of the golden light. By the power of the golden light of what? Well, you could say by the power of the golden light, but it actually says by the power of the holy, sublime golden light, but it doesn't say sutra. So, by the power of the golden light, it, re, it, removes all karma and all karmic hindrance.

[29:56]

Just a second, Sarah. And So some translations seem to say that the power is the power of the sutra. Some translations seem to say by the power of the practice of confession and repentance. Some sutras say by the power of the golden light. So it's the sutra, it's the confession, and it's the golden light. The Sutra's a golden light, the Confession's a golden light, the Buddha's a golden light. By the power of Anuttara Samyak Sambuddhi, in the form of this training, Confession and repentance is a training, is a training in the vow to realize, by that golden light of that practice, all the karmas and hindrance are removed. But just once. Now, it also, we don't just do it once, but just once.

[31:06]

And then we vow to continue. But just once, it says. And that's, I think, for me, the center of this sutra and the most amazing part of this sutra is that statement. And when we do the ceremony, we do the confession and repentance, and then we say, after it's over, we say, now we have been freed of greed, hate, and delusion. We have been freed of the karma of body, speech, and mind. We say that right after just saying that Well, actually we say it three times, but anyway. By that confession practice, we say that. And Dogen in his vow, which we just chanted, he says, by the power of confession and repentance, the roots of transgressing from the Buddha way melt away. So I just wanted to say, I'm not saying this is true. I'm just saying this has been, this teaching has been very influential

[32:08]

And here it is, it's a teaching which is saying that this practice of confession and repentance, this practice of avowal and acknowledgement and remorse and repair, that this has the power to actually free us from karma. And this power is a golden, sublime golden light to it. And that's part of the ceremony that we do tonight, and it's part of the ceremony we do every day during the intensive, which There it is. So it's not like, I can't figure out for sure, and nobody can really prove, is this saying that it's by the power of the sutra, which is the Buddha's teaching? Is it by the power of the golden light, which the sutra is about? Yes. Is the golden light, is the ritual enactment of confession and repentance?

[33:12]

Because confession and repentance is more than just a ritual, but the ritual act That is the golden light being exercised. And I'm saying this partly to continue the influence, to let this teaching have its influence in the West, because most people in this room have never heard of this sutra before, right? And again, Dogen doesn't mention it that much, but it's in our ceremony. There it is. And kind of like every time I say that, I go, really? Wow. What an amazing thing to say in public that now you are freed of greed, hate, and delusion. You're freed of your karma, body, speech, and mind. Isn't that amazing? You can come tonight and be amazed. I'll say it again. And you can go, really? What if that were true? What would that mean? You mean now we're free?

[34:13]

Well, what's that? What are we doing here now that we're free? And now that you're free, you're free to do this practice again. You were free to do it before. You didn't know you were free, but you were, and you were able to do it. Now you're free too, and you're able to do it. But somehow, without doing it, we aren't free. We are and we aren't. So that's, yeah. That's what I dared to say to you this morning. And I have, this belongs to the city center and I hesitate to put it down any place because I don't want to lose it, but I'd be willing to give it to some kind of like, what do I call, some guardian angel who could hold it for a while and share it with people who want to read it. I even thought some of you might want to get together during study or have a study session and read chapter three together and be amazed or whatever.

[35:21]

So if anybody wants to take care of this for the rest of the intensive and share it with people, it's here. And one more thing I want to mention is that in this particular tradition, the precepts we give are Bodhisattva precepts and they're the same for the lay and the monastic. Some of the guidelines we have at Green Gulch are only applied during practice period or during Sashin. And then when Sashin is over, they don't apply anymore. So some of those precepts are monastic precepts. But the precepts we give in our ceremony are the same for people in intensive and not in intensive.

[36:24]

They're the same precepts for in the sashin and not in the sashin. But the first night of sashin, there'll be a set of precepts read, which will be just for sashin. Yes? Can you remind me of the relationship between tokudo and jukai? Jukai is the second half of tokudo. The first part of tokudo is homage, offerings, receiving a name, renunciation, and Yeah. So it's the generous, the generosity of the Bodhisattva way is the first part of the ceremony. Lots of giving and receiving of gifts. giving of oneself, paying homage, receiving a name, a Buddha name, receiving a Buddha robe.

[37:29]

That's the first part of the ceremony. Second part is where the person specifically makes, offers incense and bows to request the bodhisattva precepts. That's the jukai, receiving the kai, the precepts. Tonight, Jana cannot physically, well, I guess she possibly could with enough assistance do a prostration, but She's not going to be doing prostrations because she's not able to physically get down on the floor and get up again. So she'll be bowing, sitting and standing. She's going to be standing bows and she'll be doing sitting bows. So Jukai is easy to say. Zaikei Tokudo takes more time. So people often refer to Zaikei Tokudo or Shukei Tokudo.

[38:31]

Zaikei means staying at home. Shukei means leaving home. People refer to Tokudo often as Jukai. Yes? In the context of dependent polarizing, Could you just help me understand how evil, as evil as we usually define it, could exist? I could see how unskillful, but I don't see how... Oh, boy. You take a little bit of ignorance, mix it in with a little flesh, and you get evil. What do you mean by evil? Evil harm, basically. Like, or even wishing to harm. Like if you try to hurt me and you don't, still it kind of harms you. If you try to hurt me, even if you don't hurt me, that hurts you. And it probably hurts your friends too if you try to hurt me, right?

[39:34]

But it might not hurt me, but you might want it to. And then you might be really angry at me even more that you didn't succeed and want even more to hurt me. Such thoughts arise from ignorance. Such thoughts arise from not understanding intimacy. So lack of understanding of intimacy, we get unskillful action. Why do we call cruelty, cruelty? I don't know how that happened. But we call some things cruelty. We call some things evil. Evil, by the way, is live backwards. But why do we say live? I don't know why we chose the word evil for this activity which hurts people. You don't get where the word evil came from? Yeah.

[40:35]

Okay. Yeah, well, so are you trying to understand that? Yeah. So I explained to you. You get a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you get harmed. What? There's some intentions behind it. No, there's two kinds. One is evil. The word evil is used, maybe cruel is a better word than evil. Ill will. There's a phenomenon called the will to violence, the will to hurt, the will for someone to be sick. That will is perhaps a manifestation of evil.

[41:43]

You wish someone ill. And that's a dependable arising. And when you see what the elements, some of the key elements, you can't see the whole thing of dependable arising, but you can see some elements are there for the arising of ill will. Like there's self-confusion and self-ignorance and self- all those afflictions are there, they're almost always there when there's ill will or a wish to be cruel. But there's another kind of evil, which is evil, I don't think it's a different thing. They sometimes call a forest fire evil, a forest fire that hurts people. If there were a forest fire that didn't hurt anybody, then I guess it wouldn't be. A landslide, an earthquake, these are also called evils. But they also have a dependable rising. various forces come together and make this thing which harms animals and humans and plants and maybe water systems and things like that.

[42:49]

Sometimes people call that evil. But we're talking here about evil karma, right? And karma is intentional. So we don't confess all the ancient evil of the world. We're talking about or even other people's karma. My karma. My karma. my intentional cruel actions. And those cruel actions, they arise with ignorance so that by confessing and repenting them, we become free of the causes of the harmful activity. by dependent co-arising of recognizing and repairing this karma. And then we have the dependent co-arising of letting go of the ignorance. And then the root of the evil karma is melted away. Does that make sense to you now?

[43:51]

Okay, so I see Meg and Sasha and Mikhail and Sam and Greg. Meg? I think for me the danger is saying the word evil internally, for me, cuts off the investigation. It's simply like, oh, evil is bad, ignorant. We've gotten rid of it. Separation happens. Whereas what seems useful to continue the exploration is, well, even if it is an intent to harm, which obviously we want to encourage ourselves and others to start to look, well, where does that come from? What's the karma in that person's life?

[44:58]

What's the self-defense mechanism, perhaps, that arose out of past experiences? What's the way to skillfully be connected with that in myself and others that is showing up in that way? How do I stay connected, stay curious, and not other be experienced, or myself, or the person, in what's happening. So again, they're culturally laden words, very much so. And I'm glad to be part of this as well. But there's a cutting off of evil is getting around. It's bad. It intentionally harms. And it stops that investigation compassionately. You're saying the word evil stops the investigation compassionately? So you said something like the word evil stops the compassionate investigation.

[46:00]

So do you want to compassionately investigate what you just said? I don't think evil stops compassionate investigation. I don't think evil stops it. Stopping it would be, I don't want to say the word. Stopping compassionate investigation would be, I'm not going to say the word. But I'll say another word. Stopping compassionate investigation is harmful. Compassion investigation is beneficial. Stopping it is not beneficial. And I'm not going to say another word. Now, if there's a word like evil, then I vow to compassionately investigate the word evil.

[47:05]

To say that the word evil stops me from compassionately investigating it, again, I would say that's not helpful. To say, for example, you're stopping me from compassionately investigating, I would say that's not helpful. So things don't stop us from investigating them. But some things are hard to investigate. You want to say some things that are hard to investigate? Is evil hard to investigate? Is pain hard to investigate? Is fear hard to investigate? Is pride hard to investigate? Is investigating beneficial? And yeah, so to say that when I see the word evil, I stop investigating, okay, then you're talking about something you're doing in response to it.

[48:12]

Or when that person comes in the room, I stop compassionately investigating. So let's not let that person in the room. Okay, okay. Let's not let him in the room. But maybe later I'll ask you if we can let him in when you're ready to compassionately investigate. But I think what I'm hearing is that people are saying, evil stops me from doing good work. And I'm saying, no. No, I don't think so. I think when this thing comes, you stop doing good work. It's not that that stops you. And a lot of people do stop doing good work when evil comes in the door for them. But evil is coming in the door saying, would you please compassionately investigate me? And actually, if evil was smart, it would say, would you just be compassionate to me? And then at some point would you investigate me?

[49:18]

But first of all, start by being compassionate with me. Evil is asking us to be compassionate towards it. Cruelty is asking us to be compassionate towards it. It's not asking us to punch it. to squash it, to kill it, to lie about it, to say bad things about it, to intoxicate ourselves in response to it. It's asking for compassion. And it's not stopping us from practicing compassion. It's challenging us to practice compassion. Hey, here I am. You be compassionate to me. Yes, I will. Hey, you be cruel to me!

[50:21]

You're really asking for compassion, right? No, I'm not! Well, maybe I won't mention that then. But inside I know this mean appearance doesn't know how to say, please help me. But that's what it's asking for. I got a little birdie told me that. A little birdie named Buddha told me that everybody, the big mean bullies on the playground are asking for compassion. Not just the sweet, gentle people on the playground. They're also asking for compassion. All the evil in the world is calling for compassion. It's not calling for cruelty. Back at it. If you cruel to evil, if you exclude it, it just grows.

[51:27]

And there's a lot of excluding of evil around here. Have you noticed? We're going to build a wall and keep the evil people out. And so the wall will get bigger. Now it's time for Sarah. Thanks for waiting. That sounds compassionate to me. That sounds compassionate. That sounds being compassionate towards your sense of I don't have the skill to deal with this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You just... When you said, I don't have the skill to deal with it, you just did not walk away. You were there with your sense that you didn't have the skill. You were there. Yeah. You were there for that.

[52:29]

Pardon? Well, that's another step. Some people would say, I don't have the skill and I have to go now. That's also possibly... But I'm going to stay. That's even... Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I often mention, you know, sometimes you're with somebody, somebody you really love, and they're just too much for you. You can't compassionately relate to them. And rather than just leaving, which might be devastating to them, you can say, I'm just on the verge of running away. I need a break, but I will come back in a half an hour. And if I'm not ready in half an hour, I'll come back in a half an hour and say, I need an hour. And then I'll keep doing that, but I won't abandon you.

[53:30]

But right now I need some space. And asking for space in a relationship is part of compassionately investigating. But just to walk away can be passive aggression. So for me, it's like I have a hard time being compassionate with myself for living in a way that I know is destructive. And that is a confession in one way. But staying with it. in a way that's actually not aggressive or not like pushing to kind of crack something seems like a real challenge. It's a real challenge, or another way to put it is it's a skill that's difficult to learn. But you still could aspire to learn that skill.

[54:33]

I guess I feel like the aspiration part is It feels too frustrating. Or you could also say it's only gone a certain distance, that the next step after aspiration is commitment. which elevates the aspiration and gives it more energy to be enacted. Plus the practice of confession and repentance to go with the vows when we don't enact the aspirations which we've committed to.

[55:33]

Because it feels, if you want to do something and it's difficult, sometimes it helps to commit to it so that it's more difficult not to do it than to do it. So that it's difficult before to do this thing. Like, for example, being married. Some people know that it would be difficult. They intuit that being married would be difficult. So when they get married, they don't just get married, they commit to being married. And they ask everybody in the neighborhood to support them when they think of splitting up. Because they know that one or both of them might try to get away from the intensity of the challenge of this compassionate relationship. So then they say they get a lot of witnesses to be there. So that when they start to waver in their commitment, their friends say, don't do that, please.

[56:40]

That'll ruin the whole community. We'll all get discouraged. If you give up, we'll give up. Please let us help you. So the aspiration to have a compassionate relationship, then commit to it, and committing with witnesses. who are going to support you to do that and who you know it will matter to them if you don't follow through. So then it'd be more difficult not to follow through. Then not following through will become more difficult. And following through is hard, and then not following through will be even harder. So you follow through. That's why we need these exercises and we need community to fulfill these aspirations through vow. And then, you know, and... Say again, ask for help with... Yeah, ask for help to enact your commitment with the things you feel your skill is not adequate for.

[57:54]

Yeah. Sometimes you ask somebody else to talk to somebody for you. Or sometimes we want to talk to people, but we don't feel like we can do it without somebody else there who is more skillful or who is more relaxed about this particular problem. So we sometimes make arrangements to promote the resources for skill. Let's see, who are the people I mentioned earlier? Mikael, and Sasha, and Sam, and now Al. Two questions. Well, I'm . I was looking for that difficulty about evil and in relationship to the interdependence.

[58:55]

And first I thought I could see that. Then I thought, well, I can. For me, the problem is more the question about guilt. Like speaking of guilt in the context of interdependence. It's more difficult to... Like if I look at it, there's no guilt in the interdependence. There's unholds of action, but I don't see guilt. So that's the more difficult part for me. Would you comment on that? What do you mean by guilt? Blame. Blame. Now blame, as you may know, in the Book of Changes, I Ching, it says in various places, no blame. I think what people mean by blame and guilt is putting the responsibility in a location.

[59:59]

That's one understanding of guilt, is that it means blame. Another understanding of guilt could be, I'm responsible. So there can be responsibility in interdependence, but there's no blame in interdependence because the responsibility is carried by everybody. So part of what we give up is we give up some idea of limits on our responsibility. So then we don't blame other people and we don't blame ourselves. They blame us. Right? Being caught in guilt is similar to locating it rather than accepting it. Like something bad happens at Green Gulch and people might come over to me and say, that's your fault, you're to blame. And for me to accept them talking to me like that, that's... Yeah, exactly.

[61:07]

Asodeska. Because I am responsible. But I'm not responsible the way they think I am. But I am responsible, and so here you are talking to me. It's not like, I don't have anything to do with people getting pregnant around here. I don't have to do with people being abusive. That's nothing to do. No, I'm responsible. So in that sense of guilt, it's not located. I don't blame. But I don't blame myself. And I don't blame the other people who have their responsibility. So in the transmission of Buddhism to the West, the first several decades, nobody, the teachers never used the word guilt. Because if they use guilt, then people go, blame. And they want people to understand the Pentagon Rising, not focusing on one thing all by itself. And this is the person. This is the one we're going to blame.

[62:08]

This is the one who did the wrong thing. Not everybody else. The other people weren't involved. So don't use the word guilt because that makes people go, boom. Here's the problem. This is the evil person. So let's not bring that up because that'll knock them off the Buddhist train. And the other word not to use for the first several generations was evil. Don't use that word. But now that we're becoming more mature, we can say evil and guilt and some bunch of other words. We can deal with them now that we're more mature. But they have a history of sending the mind into tight spots. Sasha. Oh, you have a second question. Sasha, can you go? OK. And it's also about the question of interdependent co-arising. And then in the Diamond Sutra, we were reciting a section where it said unsupported.

[63:09]

Yes. Yes? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, again, I think that that means being attaching to something, like unsupported. So you have a mind, but the mind isn't supported by sights or sounds or so on. So if you take away those particular sights and sounds, it doesn't take the mind away. I don't know if any of the translations have said not dependent on. So not, we say, a mind that doesn't abide in anything, that doesn't abide in or dwell in or rely on any dharma. But it's not independent of them.

[64:15]

It depends on them. It relates to them. but it doesn't abide in them, it's not stuck in them. And that mind, which doesn't dwell in, for example, a sight, if you take away this sight and put another one there, that mind doesn't go away and doesn't need that face. And so whatever that person is, that mind can be there for that person. But if we create a mind, a bodhisattva mind that depends on particular things, then when those things go away, that mind would go away. And also some other things might come and that mind wouldn't be there because it doesn't want to dwell on this face. But this mind can meet and be with any face, any being, because it doesn't dwell on anything.

[65:16]

So it can be there for, it can be, it can compassionately investigate anything, because it doesn't depend or rely on anything. Just like it says later, yesterday, I think it said, The Buddha asked the Buddha, when the Buddha attained unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment, was there any dharma that was attained? No, there was no dharma by which the Buddha attained when attaining awakening. In other words, the attainment didn't depend on what was happening, even though the attainment happened at the time of what was happening. And did the attainment depend on what was happening? No, it did not. Therefore, it's unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment. So the discussion of enlightenment not depending on any dharma and enlightenment not getting any particular dharma relates to this mind that doesn't rely on or dwell in any dharma but responds in an enlightened way to all situations because it doesn't depend just on these situations or those situations.

[66:28]

So the enlightened mind could occur, for example, in present-day America. It could. It could occur why people do things that we see them doing, because that mind doesn't depend on being in a reasonable situation, or being with adults, or being with children. or being with educated people, or being with whatever. It doesn't depend on anything. So it can be everywhere all the time. And it is. It's just telling you about this omnipresent. So therefore, compassion can be present no matter what's going on. And the Buddha can be present in practicing with whoever, not just with some people, but with everybody. And if the Buddha can't be present with everybody, that's not what we mean by Buddha. But in order that so that Buddha has a mind which doesn't depend on what's happening, because they're not dwelling in these are the people and those aren't the people.

[67:37]

Sasha? that maybe there needs to be a certain maturity, like what I feel the business is about, like where the confusion comes in. It's like, so in modern Western therapy, I think people avoid using that word, you know, but talk instead of being unscathed, or like having unscathed for the also actions. And another part where I'm like, where association comes into play that causes people's resistance to evil, where there's other words that we use here, like repentance and confession, are so deeply rooted in Christian connotations that... Don't say that word here, please.

[68:51]

People get upset if you say that word. I don't even know what you said. You didn't say that word. And so like discussing it, like we do, there's one thing that I don't understand. And you said there's ignorance, right? And there's intent. And I don't really see how these two work together, because if there's ignorance, how can there be the intent to harm a particular people? That ignorance and feeling entitled, right, and thinking, I deserve to, I don't know, take this thing that doesn't belong to me because, I don't know, I'm suffering so bad, and I can't see the other person suffering. So there is the intent to heal my suffering, but there's not the intent to harm the other person.

[69:57]

There might not be, I'm sure sometimes there might be. There might not be, yeah. There might not even be the intent. So how does evil... Well, I didn't quite follow, because I thought you described the situation of evil. You talked about, I am going to do this. And to talk, I'm going to get this thing, without talking to the other person, sounds like I don't understand myself. Like I think, again, that I, we talked about before, you know, like, I actually believe that I'm going to do the action, rather than I look and see, oh, here's the sense of me, here's the idea of taking something, and I really believe that, and I have the idea that I'm going to do the taking. That's ignorance. And then based on that, I can do things like take things without asking people.

[71:00]

But what's the intent? I mean, does the intent to take things... Well, the intent is the thought. It's a thought. And as a thought, it's not just the thought, I'm going to take that. It's a bunch of other mental factors which sort of cooperate with that thought. And it seems like that's really what the consciousness is heading to do. That's the intention. No. Well, it could be, but let's just talk about the intent to... Like, you know, there's a pizza sitting there and then you're at the table and people invite you to the table. And then you... you reach out and take a piece of pizza. Okay? But you didn't ask anybody if you could have that piece. And someone else might say, you know, would you please ask before you take the pizza, like we teach children? Would you ask first? We teach them that. But people might think you actually took something that wasn't given.

[72:01]

They might say, well, that pizza wasn't for you. You didn't mean to steal it, but other people thought you did. Or you might even have thought, there's some pizza here and I don't think it's for me, but I'm going to take it anyway. And I don't want to harm anybody, but I'm going to take the pizza. I would say that even if nobody's around, to do that in that way would harm me because I would miss the chance to investigate my own mind rather than say, are you looking at what you're doing here? Are you so hungry that you don't have time to look inside and see what's going on? And the answer might be, no, I could look. And then you start looking and you may discover the intention. And then you might see, oh, there's the intention. Now the intention's already occurred, so now I see a harmful intention. But I see it and I confess it and maybe I let go of it.

[73:07]

The study of the mind where the self is and where these ideas of actions are occurring is studying the intention. There is an intention. Sometimes the intention is very difficult to see. And when you can see it, then you can ask questions about it, like, would this be helpful or not? And you might say, no, I think it wouldn't be helpful. But you're looking like you're not quite following the thread here. So the intention is harmful because it might harm me or others. But the intention... Wait a second. The intention is harmful because it might harm you or others, yes. Yes, go ahead. So that's what... No, you don't want to, you don't have to wish for harm.

[74:08]

Right. This is just going to blanket statement. Here it is. It's a shocking one. Ready? Any unexamined mind, okay, if you don't examine the mind, that's harmful to you. Because when you don't examine it, one of the consequences of that is to not examine the next one. So not studying the consciousness where there's often confusion and ignorance, not studying the mind where there's ignorance, is harmful to the mind. And the consequence is that it tends to give rise to other minds which don't study the mind. This mind is full of ignorance and delusions. And not studying it is harmful to the whole process of awakening and compassion and wisdom. But in Mahayana it also hurts everybody else because your work affects them, and your lack of work affects them.

[75:09]

So there's no intention to hurt here, but there's ignorance. And there's reaching for pizza, not wanting to hurt anybody, actually wanting to feed somebody. There's a wish for pizza. Not examining it is ignorance, is ignoring the opportunity for compassionate investigation. Not passing up on that is harmful. Not necessarily. It actually could include the intention to help. So here's a mind. I want to help the pizza cook by eating the pizza. But I didn't examine my mind, and that was harmful. And then this unexamined mind then gave rise to reaching for the pizza, and the cook said, you know, I didn't ask you to eat the pizza. I want you to put the pizza back and examine your mind, please.

[76:12]

That's what I want you to do. That would really help me. And I'll give you a pizza if you do it. So some people have, if you look in their mind, you see lots of beneficent thoughts, but they don't examine them. And that harms them. And they may have more beneficence thoughts, which they also might pass on. If they keep it up, they won't just have beneficence thoughts. And they also, some people have, ooh, here it comes. They have beneficence thoughts in their mind. They look in their mind, they say, this mind's full of kindness, and we're going to build a wall. And we're going to stop the government. because I have a beneficent idea in my mind to protect Americans from evil people. So I'm going to build a wall. And this is a beneficent project. But I don't have time to be examining my own delusion. I have more important things to do than that. That's

[77:12]

That's a harmful thought. But you can say, I was just kidding. It was a harmful thought if I grasp it. It's just a thought. But if you believe that you have more important things to do than study your mind, that could hurt your mind a lot. But that doesn't sound that evil, but it doesn't sound like you're trying to hurt people by saying, I'm not going to study my mind. But some people, it's a kind of a mean thing. They say, I'm not going to study my mind anymore because it's an ugly mind. I'm not going to study it. Or like I said, this is a difficult situation. I'm abandoning it. Let's see, Sam. Is there a medicine or perhaps what I'm looking at inside is a lack of confidence?

[78:38]

insecurity that is just pushing me to do, in this scenario, just the dangerous thing. Excuse me. I heard you say, is there a medicine for a lack of confidence? If that is what is occurring, which I'm, you know, pardon me. Pardon? Pardon? Yeah. Yeah. So if... Yeah, but I guess I would like to say we're not so clear what's going on, but even though I'm not clear about what's going on, I aspire to compassionately investigate what's going on. And I think you've been investigating somewhat, but your investigation doesn't seem to be clearly revealing what's going on. But I think you are giving some compassion to it. So if one theory about what's going on is lack of competence, well, let's just say, okay, maybe that's it.

[79:57]

In this thing which I'm calling lack of competence, I want to be generous towards it and let it be. I really want to be kind to it and tender with it and careful with it and patient with it. For example, you also said stress. So maybe there's some stress. That would also be something which you could be generous towards and careful of. Let's just say I'm trying it. During the 30 minutes that you were taking it yet to me, I was really stoked. I'm like, I'm practicing. I'm ready to practice. It's clear. Okay. Oh, right. Moment of presence. Oh, crap. I'm defeated again. I'm thinking about all types of crazy stuff. I really want to ask this question. I can't seem to get the thing off my shoulder for like one of the few seconds. Well, I heard, as you were talking, which took a few seconds, I heard several opportunities for compassion there. Well, like, something like, oh, I blew it again. What did you say? What was it? I blew it? Oh, I'm defeated again.

[80:58]

Oh, I'm defeated again. Okay, so here we are. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, here we are. We're in a consciousness. Somebody's here. And there's a thought, oh, I'm defeated again. There's the thought. And the thought includes the I, which is there. So there's a thought that the I has been defeated. This thought and the I that are in this mind are calling for compassion. So let's let the I that's been defeated, let that be here. And let's let the thought, I've been defeated, let's let it be here. That would be a moment of generosity. That would be a moment of compassion. And also, there's a thought. I've been defeated again, and then there's a thought. I would like there to be some compassion towards that thought and towards the I. That could occur. And it's occurring in your mind right now, isn't it?

[82:00]

But you said, you almost said, but I was thinking of something else. Right? Yeah, just now. You said that. But I asked you if this thing was in your mind and did you look and see if it was there? Was it there? Okay. But now it is. So if I ask you, is the thought of being compassionate in your mind and you look and you don't see it, That means it is in your mind because you're looking for that. But when you, yeah, you feel like you're, well, you feel like you're looking. And when you feel like you're looking, do you notice that you feel like you're looking? Yeah. And then when you see you're missing, do you notice that you think you're missing? Yeah. So then you're looking and you're seeing it. Now that you're seeing these things, you're seeing I'm looking, you're seeing I'm missing, now can compassion be allowed to come here for looking and for I'm missing?

[83:20]

So you locate these phenomena in the consciousness and then you somehow remember the teaching, oh, there could be some compassion here for this stuff. Now we're cooking. Now we've got compassion on the scene with all these things that are bopping around and you call them for short crazy. Consciousness is kind of crazy. It's got all this stuff bopping around. And then some of them are like, oh, defeat it again. Oh, All that's calling for compassion. And then throw in a little of this and a little of that too if you want to. All these things are calling for compassion. And it helps to be able to look at them, including look at the one, looking doesn't help, the idea, looking doesn't help, look at that one too. Be compassionate to the thought, it's no good to be compassionate. Be compassionate to the thought, I don't want to be compassionate.

[84:27]

Welcome, yeah. Welcome, I don't want to be compassionate. So when I talk about being compassionate to everybody and everything, then people come up and graciously tell me some things that they cannot, not yet ready to be compassionate to. So they hear about this idea of compassion, they see an object and they say, I can't practice compassion towards that. They tell me. And I say, well, okay, I hear you. Can I be compassionate to them telling me that they're not going to be compassionate to that person? Can I? Yes. Unless it's me. There's one more step. Then I say to them, can you be compassionate to your sense that you can't be compassionate to that person? Yeah. Anything more? Can I talk to some other people? Okay. It's all compassion is in the soup with this guy.

[85:39]

Any other outstanding hands? Outstanding? Okay. So I hear Al, Jana, Greg, and Simon. Again, can I say something? Can I say something? You said evil confuses you. Yeah, but the term evil confuses you. So I'd just like to point out that you could also consider that differently. It isn't that the word confuses you, it's that you're confused about the word. Yeah, but one way you don't accept the responsibility the other way you are.

[86:44]

One way it's irresponsible. It confuses me. rather than I feel confusion about that word. If you feel the confusion and you look at the confusion, you can become unconfused. Okay? Go ahead. Pardon? There's no inherent anything. Yeah. No. There's no inherent no free will. There's no inherent free will. Okay? And there's no inherent no free will. Well, wait a minute. You just missed the boat there. Yeah. But you said there's no free will, but there's no such thing as no free will. Because it's — Well, the same with will.

[87:50]

Will has no inherent existence. Free will has no inherent existence. No free will has no inherent existence. Evil has no inherent existence. Nothing exists by itself. Everything exists by dependent core arising. No, it's not. You keep slipping from no inherent to no non-existent. There's no inherently existing evil. It's not that there's no evil. There is evil, and there is free will, and there is will, and there is no free will. There's all these things, and there's also not all these things. Like it says in the Diamond Sutra, in the Bodhisattva, the thought of a person doesn't occur. What does that mean? It means that the thought of a person does occur. But first of all, if thought does occur, then the teaching is it doesn't occur. Well, that means it does occur.

[88:52]

Yes, if we say evil. Everything that appears in consciousness, everything that appears in consciousness, everything that appears in consciousness looks like it exists by itself. That's the way things look there. They all look like that. Everything looks like it. Everything's got this appearance, and then underneath the appearance it says, this thing exists by itself. Under all the... Under all the appearances, there's this little thing that says, this one exists by itself, this one exists by itself, this one exists by itself, this one exists by itself. It says it under all of them. That's how they look. Evil exists by itself. Good exists by itself. Therefore, the evil exists by itself. It doesn't need good. Good exists by itself.

[89:58]

It doesn't need evil. And also, we can't see the thing written there. So it looks like evil is separate from good. It looks like I'm separate from that or that. It looks like here's a thought and here's me and then we're separate. But I own the thought. Anyway, consciousness is the land of delusion where evil looks like it inherently exists and good looks like it inherently exists. That's how things look. If we compassionately investigate evil, we find out that it doesn't inherently exist. But it doesn't mean there's no evil. It just means it doesn't exist separate from good. You're not just doing the same thing again. There is evil action, but it doesn't exist separate from good action. And to investigate evil action compassionately, you will wake up to evil action is not separate from the entire universe.

[91:04]

And then that's what's called, realizing that is called not doing evil. The Buddha teaches don't do evil, but what it means, study evil compassionately and realize what it means to not do evil by studying evil compassionately. Trying to get rid of evil, you won't understand how to not do evil or what not do evil means. What it teaches, don't do evil. Don't do any or don't do all evil. What does that mean? It means compassionately investigate all evil. And then you'll realize how it is to not do evil. And the same with good. Investigate good. and you realize how to do good. Because the Buddha's teaching is, don't do evil. The Buddha's teaching is, do good. So that's what the Buddha's teaching. But in order to understand that, you have to study evil and study good.

[92:11]

If you study evil and study good, you practice not doing evil and doing good. But not because you're holding on to the good and pushing the evil away. It's because you study both with equal compassion. You're not more compassionate when you study good than you are with studying evil. As a matter of fact, some people think, well, we don't have to study good. That's good enough. That harms you Greg. What's your name, Greg? Christopher. I imprinted Greg, sorry. Christopher. Yeah. Going back to responsibility. between sins of commission and sins of commission.

[93:12]

And so there's things that you do that you commit, sins of commission, like a harmful action, but not interrupting harm in process. Someone else's harm, like intervening in a murder or stopping a man from beating his wife. Another one is somebody needs help and you don't help them. And in a larger context, too, think of the historian Howard Simms as you can't be neutral on a moving train. And you're born on the train. The train's going in a harmful direction. You're not to blame for being born on a moving train that's going in a quote unquote evil direction. But you're kind of responsible to find the brakes. And how do we practice that level of morality? Let's see. I kind of thought, oh, are we practicing compassion towards the setup which you just gave us?

[94:18]

Yeah, so how can we be compassionate to this tragic scenario? And I'm suggesting that if you can compassionately investigate this scenario, that that will lead to a great awakening, and the great awakening will do a good job with this situation. It might or might not find the breaks. There might not be any breaks. I don't know. But it will help everybody to realize awakening on this train by being compassionate to this situation, which seems like there's going to be lots of suffering there. That possibility is being held out, that you can help people who are in a really difficult situation that's not going to get better, that might not get better.

[95:25]

Like you can help people with illnesses that never turn around. that just lead to death. But you can be there with them and practice compassion and investigate their illness and everything in the situation and transmit that to them so that you and they together realize the Buddha way under the circumstances of tragic illnesses, tragic suffering. That the Dharma reaches all these situations and there's a potential for studying it and discovering it in all situations and bringing that discovery to everybody. Wait a second. They're going to attack you for what? For saying we... Oh, yeah. Yeah, and you can also get flack for saying that the train's headed in the right direction.

[96:32]

So when there's flack, there's an opportunity for compassion. When there's not flack, there's an opportunity for compassion. And in both situations, it might be difficult to practice compassion. But still the opportunity is there. Yana? It seems to me that what I'm hearing, investigated properly. And then again, that leads to another action that maybe goes a little bit more astray, and a little bit more astray, and a little bit more astray until one ends up somewhere that we maybe can call evil. And I saw a film here. I saw high security prisoners in a prison here in California.

[97:37]

And there's a group of men that go in and do something. They call it work. film is also called the work and and they bring some men from the outside into the prison and they form groups but with the outside and the prisoners and they do um they basically hold each other's processes they disenchanted and what starts to happen is a lot of confession and repentance and also the roles of the outside men often feeling like they were some kind of benefactors. Everything's kind of put on the head, so that in the end, At least for me, it was a really interesting film, because there you can see both evil and good in the same place. And often, some of these high-security prisoners, they end up in the place where they can start to see when the things started to go astray, and what actually was causing the fact that they ended up in a place where they murdered somebody.

[98:42]

So anyhow, I just wanted to recommend this film. It's a really good film to just... And it's amazingly somehow done. I don't even know how they have been able to have cameras there and have people be so generous and so open to do for the chair. Well, I appreciate you sitting through this challenging morning. We still have one more hour to enjoy. May our intention equally expand every...

[99:39]

@Transcribed_v005
@Text_v005
@Score_86.61