It said that it was going to go until Friday at 2.30. Is it okay if we end at lunchtime? Is that right? I'd like to end at lunchtime. That's all right. So, if you have any questions at this time about what was presented last night, please, if you like, bring them forth. I have a question I was thinking about last night and this morning. I think I've always thought of karma as kind of in the way, I didn't have a Christian upbringing, but like the way I thought of God, kind of like this law that everything I said or did or thought was somehow, you know, like singing or kind of like I couldn't, no matter how small that... Some, like, if you think of God as like a presence that would be keeping track of your actions, and in Buddhism, I guess, I was wondering if it's, when you spoke of the mechanical aspect of the law of karma, you know, how it is, not exactly like a rest of everything you've done, but how it is, and, you know.

[01:26]

This little one-page thing I gave you has three sections. One is, what is karma? The next section is about the retribution result from karma. That's the section you're bringing up. And the third is, who inherits, or what inherits this, you know, where does the result go? Okay, so I'd like to have a separate go on to it. Your discussion about the consequences, in that time you can bring this up, okay? I'd still like to focus on, you know, at this point, what is karma to see if we understand what it actually is in the first place. Any questions about that? Before we go on, how do the effects manifest? What's the pattern of retribution for action? Last night, I'm sorry I can't remember the exact reference, but maybe the word will bring something to your mind anyway, but you said something about karma as bondage, or even if you somehow understand something, you could still be caught.

[02:47]

There was something about bondage in there. But the question that occurred to me is what about, or how did that have something, what's the relationship to bodhisattva vow, that even if you and come back and exist in the mud, somehow that and lotus and muddy water, how karma and that vow are reentering, if there's some relationship there, or... Yeah, okay. So... Last night I talked about what karma was, but before I talked about karma, I talked about how important it is to study karma. So, one, there is a teaching that there's this like true body of Buddha,

[03:55]

that this enlightenment has a kind of reality. The reality body is like vast space, but it can manifest in the world in response to beings. So if you have beings, for example, beings who are involved in karma, the reality body of Buddha manifests in response to those beings, like us. and the way it manifests in the form of teaching reality. So, for example, it manifests in the form of a person like Shakyamuni, and he teaches, and what does he teach? He teaches right view. So, enlightenment comes into the world where beings are caught up in karma and teaches them to look at karma. It comes into the prison of karma and teaches beings how to study the prison.

[04:59]

So Sonja's saying, well, now you've got this bondage prison, this karmic prison, what about the bodhisattva vow to come into the prison? come into the dirt, mud. Yes, the Bodhisattva vow is that enlightenment does come into the world of karma and teaches beings in the world of karma how to study karma. And from the point of view of enlightenment, the prison, the mechanical prison of karma is a playground to come into in order to teach beings how to get out. It's a favorite game called teaching dharma in the world of karma, the suffering being. And for a bodhisattva, there's no way for a bodhisattva to do her work other than entering the world of karma.

[06:06]

But the world of karma bodhisattva does not have a job site or playground. So, it's not necessarily escaping, I'll say at the moment, but understanding karma or engaging. It's understanding how to live in karma, how to move through karma in freedom, to find the freedom. Not to be free of, but to have the freedom. To be free of, to be free of, but not have to leave to be free. You have to give up the world in order to be free of it, probably. You don't have to give up the world to be free of it. And the same with our own mind. As a living creature we have a mind, we have a...

[07:10]

real field of experience, what's the way to be in that field of experience that's freedom? And first of all, if there is any obstructions and clings and attachments and confusion and suffering in that field, if we study it, we can become free of it. So I tell that story quite often as well. in the land of Islam. And one of his friends sent him a present. He opened the present. It was a prayer rug. And he thought, well, why didn't he send me a file or some money to bribe the guards or a gun or something? What a friend. Anyway, he put the prayer rug down and started bowing on it as they were doing that practice.

[08:12]

And he bowed on the rug and after a long time he started to get to know the pattern in the rug. And then he gradually noticed an unusual pattern for a prayer rug. And he gradually realized that actually it looked like a diagram. He realized it looked like a diagram for a lock. So he realized that it was a diagram of the lock of the cell. He made a key and cut out. So if you just keep studying the diagram of your bondage, you'll see the key. So we're, you know, there's some pattern. There's some pattern there. Chinese characters for, you know, for thinking, for volition, up there. They see the top part, the right, right, the pattern of the right field, the bottom part's the mind, so it's the pattern of the mind. You just keep studying the pattern of the mind, you'll see how there's a lock there.

[09:18]

Gradually, under the lock, you'll see what kind of key there would fit that lock. And then you just, and you, you know, that's right why you're in it. I have trouble telling the difference between non-comic and non-comic. Like you mentioned that the reflex of the mirror is a non-comic thing. So what about... And the working of the stair gear. It's not comic, but it's a working. It functions, but there's no... There's no ... in there. It's a non ... the way that bamboo thing works with the water and the earth, it's not thinking. It's like putting your hand ... taking your hand off something really hot. You know, you can do that. Or like a child, you know, a little kid, they ... when they're quite young, if they're on a table like this and they move toward the edge of the table,

[10:25]

they get scared, or they back away from the table. Because if there's a pattern, and the pattern changes, they're wired to move away from that pattern change. And so you can actually have a floor which has big squares on it, a flat surface, and then little squares on it, and the child will come to the little squares and back away. And if you push it on the floor into the little squares, it'll get really upset. You following that? Because usually if it's a continuous pattern and the size of the pattern gets smaller, that means it indicates a drop. So they're built to move away from that. They jump into that space. Especially boys. What about... So, dude, if a mother is there, encouraging them to look.

[11:36]

Well, I didn't... I forget to ask my question. Yes. So, anyway, that's... Not karma. They're not thinking. It's just built into them. So what about this thing of a KU and a person turns their head? That seems like it would not be a karmic thing. They're not really thinking about it. It could be. Yeah, right. It seems like... This is an example of where... What in that story is... The story he's referring to, which we have to tell now. And the story says... We have to tell a story now. We have to tell a story now so they can follow it. Okay. So, I teach, two monks are talking, and one monk says, here, watch this, and he calls to a boy who's nearby, he's creeping, and he says, hey, you, and he says, what's, he says, hey, you, and blah, blah, blah, this, and he says, what's, you, and blah, blah, okay, two different responses to the word. One is, he just turns, and the other case, he says, thank you.

[12:37]

Okay, so what's your question? The first one is . Or the original story was, hey you, and he says, I call out his head, I say, what is it? So in other words, if I say, hey you, and he just responds like this, then I say, what is it? If he hesitates, he's thinking. What about, like, as you're talking to me, when you pick up a tea cup, it seems as if you're not, like, thinking about it. There must be some intention to do that. Well, again, there could be an intention to do it, okay.

[13:39]

So there could be this kind of like busy thing of the mind shaped in such a way that guides the hand over the teacup. And you could say that that's karma. And it's particular karma if there's the operation of a self, a belief in a self which is isolated from other selves, and that self is now going to act upon this with a pattern of thought and move the arm. That could all happen. All right? And simultaneously, there would be, you know, complete presence with that at the same time, which wouldn't be karma. But you're saying, well, isn't there some karma there too? Maybe there is. Now, What if training oneself in that situation of karma, and studying karma for a long time, you become more and more intimate with this kind of non-thinking that's going along with the thinking, and gradually you uproot, or, you know, gradually, finally you uproot the belief in self, what makes physical and verbal and mental action into karma.

[15:05]

then you can reach for these things, and there's not any karma at all. It's just non-thinking. So whether it's a case of karma by itself, and the person's just involved in karma, or whether there's karma and observation of karma, or whether by having observation come for a long time the person has become intimate with the process and seen the source of it and become free of it. And now all the . Which stage of the process it is, I guess we'd have to look into ourselves and discuss with someone about where we are in that picture. If we're discussing it, we're probably on the verge anyway of starting to study. But there can be a long training period We're studying the karma but have not yet gotten to the source of, you know, illusion that makes karma possible.

[16:14]

And in fact that's the way things really are before we get into projecting self onto the process. And Dania was talking about something about, last night, she was talking about if you can become completely intimate with this process, even the process of karma, that intimacy, from that intimacy, appropriate action comes. So that someone can call your name, you can turn your head, just like a Buddha would turn her head. Hello, Buddha? Kind of like, well, I'm Buddha, so I'll turn my head. Just Buddha. You know, Buddha knows his name. I am Buddha, yes. They call me Buddha. So I turn my head when they say Buddha.

[17:14]

But no, kind of like I do it. And sometimes you might say Buddha, Buddha won't turn his head. Because it's not appropriate. Because it's an obsession of no head turning. to understand how, once you start becoming aware of karma, or even before, you might not be able to understand how you can act free of self. But when you're free of self, then action can be free of self. When the living person is free of self-belief, then there still can be action. So enlightened beings can walk around without doing any karma. That's the proposal.

[18:18]

Yes. What's the relationship of subconscious and subconscious thoughts? The relationship between subconscious thoughts and unconscious thoughts is safe. The relationship, they count as karma. If you have an unconscious... When you act it out, it's still kind of... You can kind of decide how that kind of action is different from how it... Which kind of action? The act of knowing the response of the room. That's the difference, is that when somebody calls your name and you turn your head, if it's by habit, it's probably karma.

[19:19]

And if it's just according to the circumstances, you know, if it's just the circumstances determine it, rather than there can be no habit, then it's not karma. I guess you'd have to say, well, could there be a habit that doesn't have anything to do with self? And it didn't have anything to do with self. Would that habit be okay and not be karma? And I would say, maybe even a habit that had no self might not be karma either. For example, the language habit. So that, you know, there's some kind of like and going along with the world. Each of us has this name called you when somebody else has it. We're you when somebody else has it. That's kind of a language habit. So I'd say, hey, you, and then the habit is to turn your head.

[20:27]

The agreement, the convention is to turn your head. But there might be no you there, no attachment to the you as a separate being when you turn it. And I think that part of it... These two monks are sitting there and trying to tell the difference between ignorance and enlightenment. So the one monk is going to show the other monk how to test it. So they call this boy, they say, hey you. The boy turns his head. But I think what they mean is that the boy turns his head, just turns his head. He's not worried about whether he's turning it well or not. He's not concerned whether he's going to gain any income. He just turns his head. And When he turns his head, the monk who's trying to show it says, is this not the immutable knowledge of all Buddhists? Hey, you. Is this not the immutable? So he turned it in such a way that the other monks didn't say it.

[21:29]

The point was, you could see that the way his head turned was like a sunflower opening. Isn't the way a sunflower opens the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Isn't the way a rain falls the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Isn't the tear on your cheek when you see suffering beings the immutable knowledge of all Buddhas? Yeah, no big deal. Now, if somebody's suffering, and the tear comes down, you wonder, now, is this tear, has somebody been noticing this tear? Am I going to get something out of this? That's not it. So, when he said, hey you, both monks were watching, hey you, and he turned his head and he said, there it is, that's Buddha. Then he says, the boy, what's Buddha? And then the boy starts thinking. See the thinking? You can see it. Things happen, you know? And he said, is this not the fundamental affliction of ignorance? So,

[22:29]

Even though it's a habit, maybe, to sort of turn your head when you're called, there's a way of doing it. There's a way of cleaning that. There's just a response. And there's a way that you're concerned. Should I turn my head? Should I not turn my head? Do I look good? Are they not like this, not like this? Am I going to get sent to this? Blah, blah, blah. Then you turn your head and you're suffering. So I think there could be habits The point is that they have to mix in with the Self. If it is, then it's karma. Yes? I think of karma as more of a cause and effect than karma as a cause and effect. No. There is a law of cause and effect of karma. Karma itself is not cause and effect. Karma is, well, you could say karma is an effect, and karma is a cause, but it is not causing an effect by itself.

[23:36]

But it is a result, and it is an intense cause. And there is karma causing effects. Karma itself is just a phenomenon, but when it arises, it has effects. So the teaching is that the right view is karma does have effects, There isn't just action. There is, you know, a reaction to it. There is a consequence. So we study the cause and effect of karma, or we study that karma is involved in cause and effect. Karma, by itself, strictly speaking, is not cause and effect. It's slightly different. Yeah, but the zazen, let's see, where does that come from? You say zazen will do that, but the zazen that doesn't come in by zazen.

[24:43]

The zazen I'm talking about is there prior to your blood pressure being lowered. So the first time you sit... The way you're sitting itself is a zazen. Before you even start sitting, zazen is there. So, before you start sitting, zazen is there. When you first sit, zazen is there. And after you practice zazen for 3 hours and 27 minutes, your blood pressure drops. Okay? But your higher blood pressure itself is zazen, and your lower blood pressure. Zazen is all pervasive. Like we say, it's the air before and after the striking of the hammer. Its exquisite feel resonates through all time and space. But this lowering of blood pressure and all those other good stuff gives me no happiness. Pardon? Thought then is enlightenment.

[25:44]

It's not a cause of enlightenment. I mean, it's what I call thought then. the zazen of buddhism. Now, some people, the zazen, you know, we don't have a captain on the earth, so some karmic being can go say, I'm doing zazen now, and another zazen, and another kind of karma. Which is fine, they can call it zazen. You can't control these words. But strictly speaking, the Zazen of the Buddha, Buddha doesn't do karma. Buddha just saves all beings. And that's Zazen. That's Buddha Zazen. Buddha Zazen saves beings. It doesn't necessarily lower blood pressure. But certain kinds of conflict. How does what you just talked about relate to objectivity, which is to see a situation and not then judge it?

[27:11]

It relates in the sense that what you're seeing is a situation and not bringing judgment to it. That's the best way to study karma. That would be a good way to study karma, to see a situation and not bring judgment to it. Now what situation do you see? You see a situation of karma. What's the situation of karma? bringing judgment to situations. So, there it is, we've got situations. Here's your mind, okay? Got this mind, got this experience field, there's judgment there. In most, almost all states of consciousness, in almost every experience we ever have, there's judgment. That's part of the pattern, that's part of the landscape of a moment of experience, there's judgment. Okay? So now you've got judgment here someplace. And then what else you've got going on? Various other, you know, impulses and emotions and intentions and perceptions and concepts, all this stuff's going on.

[28:25]

And there's some judgment. So to observe that field, without judgment. In other words, just let it be as it is. That's the best way to study the field of judgment. So some people are attracted to Buddhism or Zen because they feel it's non-judgmental practice. But again, it's not that when you're practicing a meditation that's non-judgmental. It doesn't mean that there's not judgments in your mind. You realize freedom from judgment by studying judgment. So in most states of karmic consciousness, part of the pattern is that there's some judgment there. And some judgments are really painful, and some are very painful. Some judgments are actually quite pleasant. Does that go into that stream? Yeah, non-judgmental meditation is the way to become free from... also from treasures.

[29:50]

Although you may have the instinct to be free of treasures. If you're in bondage to treasures, you'll fall into bondage to junk. The point is, all kinds of bondage is suffering. Bondage to beauty, bondage to the lovely, bondage to the holy, bondage to liberation. Bondage is bonding. And so if we non-judgmentally study bondage, we'll become free. And again, to say free of bondage to junk means free of bondage to the judgment of junk. Thank you. Junk becomes gold. Well, it's not so much that junk becomes gold, but that junk becomes beautiful. If you study things with a non-judgmental attitude, you gradually see how they happen.

[30:57]

And when you see how anything happens, The way junk happens is as beautiful as the way treasures happen. And I don't think so. Because although the treasure may be nicer to look at, And so that's a nice plus. So you've got this nice treasure plus the beauty of how it happens. Wouldn't that be better than this very obnoxious thing plus the beauty of how that happens? You get an extra bonus from seeing the beauty of the ugly. So they kind of balance out and everything actually is kind of equally overwhelmingly beautiful when you see how they happen. So it isn't exactly that...

[31:58]

jump, or obnoxiousness, change into something else, but rather you get to see the light of everything. When you can look with this enlightened attitude. I think that's it. Are you having trouble coming to terms with beauty? Yes. So, is that a form of bondage, or is it really attached to the form of the birth, or is it associated with the birth? What do you mean when you say, is that a form of bondage?

[33:03]

So, you're talking about you could become bondage to suffering, or you could become bondage to fear. Well, Jenny was talking about getting away from junk, and I said also, become free of treasure. You can't actually... I don't think you can become in bondage to beauty. I think what you do is, when you see beauty, and you try to get it, you kill it. So, because you want to be in bondage to beauty, because you want to, like, have beauty, the beauty is un... what do you call it? You can't exploit it. You can only kill it and exploit the killed beauty. Because real beauty is just, you know, totally out of control. So we try to make it into our own version of beauty, which we then can sell, or possess, or manipulate.

[34:10]

So we've killed beauty. Because beauty is just the way things are happening. You can't get a hold of that. No, not necessarily. As long as you, when beauty happens, as long as you just let it be and therefore lose it. Part of the way beauty is that it's the way things are happening and the way things are happening doesn't hold still. Then if you just let it sort of be out of control and just keep overwhelming you, then you haven't killed it. Now, in the midst of that, you might wish I could get a hold of it. Geez, I wish I could have it for a little while. Just hold it for a second. That wishing, that yearning, that wouldn't necessarily kill it unless you act on the yearning and stop your car and get out and take a picture.

[35:17]

And then you look at the picture. Like, you know, when you drive down the Green Gulch on that road, you know, and you come driving, you come around the corner and you go, there's the big ocean, right? You know, kind of want to stop your car and, you know, hold it there for a second, but... Have you ever stopped your car? I've stopped my car a few times. It's not there. You come around the corner and there's this flash of ocean and sky. It strikes you, you know. And then you keep driving and you lose it. You go around another curve and it's gone. Because you can't watch it, otherwise you'll have an accident. Right? So you turn, you know. And you lose this beauty. You lose the ocean. You lose the sky. Then you come around another corner. There it is again. But not the same one. No, the new one. You want that, but you have to keep turning. If you actually stop your car and look, because you're trying to get it.

[36:25]

But that yearning, I think that's okay. The fact that you drive around the corner, beauty, and you lost it. It hurts you when it hits the first time, and it hurts you when it goes away. But that hurt is not real. It's just painful, because it just attacks your heart. wakes your life up, then you look away. You're a little bit like, oh, I'm not quite completely willing to let it go, right? A little bit looking forward to the next time. And if you look forward to the next time when you come around, if you're watching for it, or if you're looking for another turn, you're not there. That's my experience. If I'm waiting for it, it doesn't come. It's when it surprises me. Just like that. This big Garuda bird comes in and just dives into my heart and blows it up for a second. I want more. Okay, fine. But to actually act on them, then you pretty much close your eyes. You can't see it. Close your heart.

[37:29]

Say, I don't want any more of this beauty invasion and beauty abandonment. I'm going to fight back and stop my economy and go out there and get it. It doesn't work. So there you are sitting in the venue and the birds sing and they get you, the sound gets you, okay? And then it goes away. And then they'll be in for it. But it really wasn't the sound of the bird, it was the way it happened. It wasn't just the sound of the bird, it was the sound of the bird coming in your ear while you were listening. All that is one with the beauty. We have jumping problems with that. My friend who's about six years old, he likes me as a model, and he's kind of just doing things with all of their masks, and he's just kind of painting and gluing and just thinking.

[38:39]

And he's always kind of like, on this end, he's trying to keep it a little bit under control. Have you ever tried burning it? You should take a photograph. And I look at her and I'm like, that doesn't change. But lately I've really picked it and remembered that. And I thought that she had the fresh heart and she could change. And all this math and drama is going to change. And now I understand. Yeah, fresh eyes. So we have fresh eyes. Study our karma with fresh eyes. Okay. Yeah, I think that's probably...

[39:43]

Yeah, uprooting the karma means uprooting the source of the karma. Because we really should be... If you fight karma, it flares up. This gentle, alert presence with it leads to freedom from it and getting to a group. But if you just try to pull karma up directly, You just have made karma stronger because you're trying to pull up. If you're in the world of karma and you try to pull it up, that's just more karma. And if you know how to pull karma up without interjecting yourself and repeating karma, then you wouldn't have to pull up karma because it would already be pulled up. Okay, anything else?

[40:59]

The observation of actions in the study of karma is one of the wisdoms. It seems that when you bring... There's a lot of connections I've had with someone working in this family. Yes. Well, I'm happy to be related to my experience, but it seems that at some point it's very easy to not allow certain thoughts or... intention to come out the bottom of it, to investigate it, before it was starting on a person.

[42:11]

And it seems as though that's something that it's hard for a new person to allow all that mud to reveal the image of that person. And to allow them to be there long enough, without judgment, to be with them. So I get, you know, I really feel, it doesn't make me uncomfortable to be with people in the United States. It seems like a kind of dualism. It is kind of dualism. Yeah, so it seems like it's not very beneficial. Ultimately, if I'm going to act in the world, it probably makes a lot of sense to me.

[43:13]

What is it that's not beneficial? The dualism between wholesomeness and unwholesomeness? It doesn't seem to be particularly beneficial. In my thinking, when I'm noticing my thoughts, and when I'm meditating on something that's going on in my head, or when I'm not meditating on something that's going on, it doesn't seem to be so beneficial to me if I'm thinking about, or if I'm talking about, a person or a person. The only time it seems to make any sense in the context of that is if I'm in a past. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, one of the things you said was the difficulty of observing. Another thing you said was that it doesn't seem necessarily helpful to categorize what you're seeing in yourself, unless you're going to act.

[44:16]

Uh-huh. Right. But, so, again you're saying it doesn't seem necessarily helpful to categorize what you're seeing in yourself. And something about this seems to be dualistic. So what I'm talking, so meditating on your mind, meditating on your consciousness, It's not to say you should make your consciousness dualistic. If you can look at your consciousness and see the non-duality of your consciousness, then you have no problem seeing the duality of your consciousness. then you're going to see the duality of your consciousness.

[45:27]

Now the question is, is it somewhat beneficial to see the duality of your consciousness? And I would say, my proposal is, that the basic principle of a meditation which will free you is that if you study the thing, you can become free of the thing. So, selfishness is dualistic. Selfishness is based on I'm separate from, or I'm isolated from, or I'm dual with the other. So my proposal is that if you want to become free of X, study X. If you want to be free of dualistic consciousness, study dualistic consciousness. I'm not saying, recommending that you think dualistically. But as far as I know, everybody I've met that I've talked to thinks dualistically.

[46:29]

So I'm not telling anybody to think dualistically. People come to become that way. I'm saying, okay, so we've got dualism. Now, if you want to be free of the dualism, I'm saying study it. So I'm not saying you should categorize your mind into wholesome and unwholesome. I'm just saying, do you have a mind that has these different types of different qualities of consciousness. Do you sometimes have wholesome states? Do you sometimes have unwholesome states? study the different kinds of states. Become familiar with how they work, and you'll gradually start to develop the conditions for liberation, whether it's different kinds of states. And that would be good to do whether you're going to act out from these realistic states in terms of speech and posture towards other people, but it would also be good to do if you're all by yourself, you know, in an empty room with no other living beings in the room.

[47:46]

It still would be good to do that because you yourself are in there and You yourself are suffering from duality. So I'm proposing that it is beneficial to study in this upright fashion, to study the dualistic thinking we're involved in. It is beneficial in the sense that it's that you're free from the whole. from the prison of dualistic thinking. Dualistic thinking is a prison of dualistic thinking. If you want to be free. Now, if you don't think it's good to be free from this prison of dualistic thinking, then it wouldn't be good to study it because you might accidentally become free of it. But if you want to become free of dualistic thinking and free of the suffering that's involved there, which emerge from it, which cause which causes these unfortunate effects, then I say study it.

[48:50]

I propose studying it, studying it as the way of freedom from it. Are you talking about studying different things? Because what I've been looking into is stuff from heaven. Yes. And I just can't wait to be serious about it. Mm-hmm. Okay, stop there. You don't have to do that. You don't have to say it wholesome or unwholesome. You don't have to. But, if you're curious about it, you might notice that such and such an action causes pain. Right. You don't have to sort of say, okay, I'm unwholesome, but you notice, oh, when I do this, that happens, and I really feel bad. That's what we mean by unwholesome.

[49:52]

Okay. In other words... In other words, it's not something that shouldn't be brought into awareness. It's simply... ...hateful to yourself. There was a little point that you said... It shouldn't be something that's not brought into awareness. What is it? This meditation is nothing about what should and should not be brought into... This meditation is awareness. Karma is about what should and should not be brought into awareness. Karma is about what should and should not be brought into awareness. Karma is like, I'm going to bring this into awareness. I'm going to get that out of awareness. I'm going to get these people into awareness. I'm going to get these people out of awareness. In other words, we're going to get these people out of here. We're going to bring these people into here. We're going to get this kid and all his toys out of awareness.

[50:53]

We're going to get a different kid into awareness. This is karma. So I'm not saying you should do karma. Karma is about moving stuff in and out of awareness. Karma is like, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna move, I got a messy house, I'm gonna move that out of awareness. I got a clean house, I'm gonna move that into awareness. I got this kind of thought, I got that kind of thought, I got this kind of food, I got that kind of food, these kinds of friends. It's this manipulation. I'm gonna manipulate the world into being a world of a certain experience. I'm gonna change my experience, I'm gonna improve my experience for me. That's karma. I'm not saying you should or should not do that. That's what karma is all like. So karma is doing that. And there's two kinds of karma. One kind of karma is trying to manipulate things in a skillful way. The other kind of karma is trying to manipulate things in an unskillful way. They're both karma, though. So you say, oh, when I try to clean my house this way, I get pretty good results.

[51:55]

When I try to clean my house in that way, I get pretty good results. But both those things and both of them are bondage. However, one is more skillful than the other. And what we call more skillful, one of the qualities of skillful action, and if you watch you can see, skillful action, one of it leads to good material results, namely like if you drive a car skillfully, you tend not to break your arms and legs, But another thing about driving a car skillfully, besides and the car being in good shape, is the opportunity to study karma. So skillful karma gives rise to the opportunity to study karma.

[52:57]

And unskillful karma not only has physical results, but it tends to darken and obscure your ability to study. And that's the most important thing, in a way, is that wholesome action tends to promote the ability to study action, and unwholesome action tends to deter, undermine the ability to study it. Is that clear to everybody? Because that's really important. Unskillful and unwholesome are synonyms. Unskillful is a synonym for wholesome. Good, skillful, wholesome, healthy, swell. These are synonyms. Bad, unskillful, unfortunate, unhealthy are synonyms. Action leads to good results in the material world and increases your chances of study and understanding.

[54:08]

Unskillful tends to lead towards unfortunate results and suppression and deterioration of your ability to study the process. And I still haven't dealt with the thing about the difficulty of study, but maybe I'll deal with that before I take the questions. But she's also saying that she finds it difficult to study if stuff's happening so fast. I think she says something about difficult to hold the experience long enough to study it. Many people have that problem that your experience is changing so fast, it's hard to hold it there long enough to study it. As a matter of fact, you cannot hold it You can't hold an experience. You can only kill it, freeze dry it, and look at it, sort of some memory image of it. That's the experience. So what you've got to do is not try to hold your experience or slow your experience down. In a sense, you've got to speed up. And the way you speed up is by slowing down.

[55:13]

So the more you can be still... the more you can be faster. And you can be there when these things happen and get a little picture of it before it changes. Because things are changing very fast. And so we can't get... We can't hold something long enough to see it... As we start to meditate on what's going on inside of ourselves, we just get a little bit of it. The more you study, the more you get. The more you start studying these rapidly changing states of mind, that's sort of like taking in a lot in a very short time. Like maybe sometimes you've maybe done this experiment, you just like, you know, look at something for a very short period of time,

[56:16]

and then close your eyes, and then try to remember all you saw. If you looked longer at it, you would get more information, but gradually things come back to you. Like this, I saw what he called an advertisement for a new Eddie Murphy movie, and he's training some new cop. And this one scene they had, he's sitting there, and this guy opens the door, and he comes to the room, and he says, close your eyes! He comes into the room and he says, the guy comes into the room and he says, close your eyes. He says, what did you see? The guy says, all the stuff he saw. He saw a tremendous amount in some part of the training like that, in that space. And you train yourself to see more and more in that little space. Still, if you look longer, you get more impressions and you can learn more, but still, we get a lot of information in a short period of time. And we often get enough to be able to I mean, very short, and the information does come to us, and we can learn to start evaluating it.

[57:27]

But it is hard. But still, if you start looking, you can gradually start getting a little information. And sometimes things of similar nature keep coming back. over and over, so you can get different aspects on it. Like you feel, like again, when you're sitting, you feel an impulse, for example, to move. And that impulse to move might come up again and again. And there's some similarity, if you keep the body in the same position, there's some similarity to these repeated impulses to move. Because it's the same body, in the same room, in the same position, basically, and it's the same impulse. Categorically, it's the same impulse. I want to move. And the motivation for it is uncomfortable. So they're not exactly the same experience, but some of the ingredients are the same. So you can watch that. And you can see now, would this be wholesome or unwholesome to move?

[58:33]

Would this be beneficial or unbeneficial to move? So you can study in that way. One can get a little better at this, gradually. One can get actually quite good at it. Gradually. Yes, Judy? When we spoke of wholesome and skillful karma, we still were not talking about good karma as is often used? You can say good. Good's another word you can use. Yeah, but it's still bondage, even though it's... All karma is bondage. All karma is bondage. And yet, street language karma, there's often a good karma. Yes. Which which I think of almost a little bit like when we were speaking about the vizagam, that it will bring good results. All good karma is like that, though. Good, wholesome, skillful. Good, wholesome, skillful.

[59:34]

Whatever other words. All those things, they all bring good results. That's the rule. They do bring good results. They bring good material results, like health, lower blood pressure, better looks, Nice boyfriends and girlfriends, cute kids, nice house, cars, money. They bring all that kind of stuff. Plus, they also bring spiritual opportunities, like they bring the ability to observe what you're doing. So that's what good karma brings. But it's still bondage. Because it's still based on and perpetuates the belief in duality. Like, Good for me. But it's true that certain actions are good for me and good for people I like. And other actions are bad for me and the people I like. Those are the bad karma, the unskillful karma.

[60:37]

So in the world of duality, which is miserable, good things happen for me. But to live in a world where good things are happening for me, who's separate from you, is still lots of anxiety and pain there. And freedom is somewhat limited. Somewhat limited. And somewhat limited is a big deal. Because freedom is like not somewhat limited. Freedom is like zero limited. And until we experience complete freedom, we are miserable. Because it is our nature to be free. That's the proposal. The nature of human beings is that we are totally free. We have a nature which is prior to this whole karmic trip. we're not going to be happy.

[61:42]

And actually, until everybody realizes that, we're going to have to keep striving to realize it. And good karma, if you're in the world of karma, good karma is recommended because it promotes this realization of how to become free of good and bad karma, or bad and good karma, whichever way you want to put the emphasis. Where's our treats? They're coming. No, no, no, stay there. I want to see if they come without you moving. No, no, stay, stay, stay. Please stay, please. Please stay, please, please stay. Please, please stay. I think it's more interesting if you don't go. We know what will happen if you do go.

[62:43]

You will make it happen. Please sit. Please. Is this wholesome? I don't know. Is it wholesome? I don't know. I think you're setting somebody up for a fall. No, I don't want her to go and make this thing happen. It is happening. But there's a thing that I just realized probably isn't unless I do... What? See, I jumped right. Yeah. This morning you said tea. Okay. It's a break time. Break. Go have tea. No, tea's coming. Go have tea. Break. It's break time now. Break time. You want to do what I say? We are breaking. Break time. Some of us are already broken. The question is, at this time, see the pattern of your consciousness. Have a sense of how to do that. Does that mean nobody can?

[63:50]

What did you say?

[63:55]

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