They're praying for this spirit, which is of the deceased. Up to 33 years they pray. The spirit might be moving through on a spiritual path for up to 33 years. It could be even longer, but they have regular ceremonies up to 33 years, kind of rooting for this spirit to attain Buddhahood. which is another slant on this after-death thing, that there's something out there, a spirit out there, and they're trying to coach it into practicing the way and attaining Buddhahood. If it should happen to take rebirth, the prayers would apply to a reborn being, which would then die again. But they would maybe die before the 33 years is up. You're praying for the spirit of being And of course, if it's a, what do you call it, founder of a temple, good to found a temple because then they'll pray for you for more than 33 years.

[01:02]

So then if you do take rebirth, they'll pray for you during your life and then when you die, they'll pray for you during your intermediate existence and then near your next life. They'll just keep praying for you indefinitely to keep you on the path as long as you are or you attain Buddhahood. then you're in Buddha-land, in Buddhahood, and then everybody can communicate with you in terms of their relationship to Buddha. So that's another kind of twist, not twist, but another aspect of the care for and concern about beings that have now departed in their spirit. A little bit different take. Hope is carrying through the rebirth, and then they're born again, and hopefully they're in the practice, but you're not necessarily praying for them anymore. So the services in that case don't go for more than 49 days. So there's another tradition in Soto Zen. You just do a 49-day service and get them to their next rebirth. So they have these two traditions, two ceremonial traditions in Soto Zen. Taking care of the intermediate being for a symbolic 49 days, but it might take longer.

[02:05]

The other is an indefinite memorial kind of effort for that. Maybe you want to make a case for assisted suicide? No, I don't. The only case I want to make is that people should consider it. Consider it? Yeah, I just want to make the case for actually really giving some thought to it. Okay. So you haven't really settled there. I'm against it. You're against it, but you have thought about it. I'm very much in the minority. Among the kind of positions who do what I do. Right. It's easy to have a position if you're not so closely involved. Right, right. Yeah, we'll talk about that tomorrow and let you know our findings. It's mostly also just the people. One of the things that we have so much in our power is to consider when death happens.

[03:06]

You know, we actually do, both individually and because of technology, we can decide when death happens. And, but, it's not something that the lay person very much. But the decision is still made all the time. And so it's an abdication of responsibility about thinking about debt. So that's the part of it that I care about, is that people really give some thought to it. Okay. Thank you. Yes, please. Are they considering that assisted suicide? I know there's actual active participation, but do they also, in that same middle, consider withholding medications? That's not considered assisted suicide. Because that's another way of promoting it. Because that happens every day. Right. That's not what you're talking about. No. You can withhold medications and machine. Right. Yeah, I'm just talking about being aware of that more than... Is that enough for this evening?

[04:27]

So tomorrow, you know, later meditation, festive breakfast, bag lunch, and we meet... Thank you very much. Good night. Rest of the morning. Yes. I'd like to hear some have solutions and maybe examples of dependent polarizing. Okay. Yes? I just have something to say because I can't stand the anxiety anymore of waiting for you to call me. I want to be able to hear what you have to say. I've been thinking, it's always been really hard for me to talk in critical groups.

[05:35]

I thought about that a lot and I realized that I'm afraid. What I say is going to sound stupid. So anyway, so I thought about that, and I realized that that was really a selfish way of thinking because other people have said it's been very helpful. So I don't have a question right now, but I was thinking of before I came here, some people asked me what I was doing, and they said, I mean, come here. What about karma? And they kind of laughed and said, oh. well, I can tell you about karma. And I sort of knew what they meant by that because I always thought I knew too. And, well, there's a simple thing that happened was I was in my kitchen and there was this mosquito hawk that kept bumping into me. It was irritating, so I decided I was going to take it outside. I took it outside, paper towel, and I set it down.

[06:39]

And I looked at it, and it didn't fly away. And I looked at it, and I could see that I'd broken its leg. It made me feel really bad. And my boyfriend looked at me and said, oh, that's real Buddhist. Now he was teething, but there was some, I probably said something. I was hurt by that because I knew it wasn't right. But what I realize now is that The intention was good, but what I didn't do was I didn't bring it into my body and my posture and how I did it. And that's important. And I think that's what's going to help me in my everyday life. Because I know I won't steal or cheat and all that, but it's the little things that seem to be the hardest for gossip and idle chatter and that sort of thing. So... I just want to thank you for having this class. And I want to thank everybody in the class for their stories and questions that have helped me understand what you're saying.

[07:48]

Thank you. I was wondering if you could say something about location. I mean, looking through my notes, because I just want... I remember you saying that sub-consciousness isn't located anywhere. And I couldn't believe that you really said that, so... Consciousness. Consciousness isn't located anywhere. Sub-consciousness isn't... I'm all personal. It's not a... But it... Because you talked about rebirth as being the shape of consciousness. Continue.

[08:50]

So... Do you have some idea of the location of consciousness? Of course I always think it's located here. Just there? I don't always take that. I often take that. Most of the time I take that. Huh? Most of the time I take that. But you think it's there and nowhere else? Is it where? Do you mean in your body? It's kind of risen. Excuse me, are we talking about location or are you changing the topic? I'm just trying to understand. I'm asking you, if you say it's located, where do you think it's located? Is it the same as your body? Exactly the same as the location of your body? Sometimes it seems that way. So you think consciousness is just the same shape, same location as your body, don't you think? Yeah, so consciousness is not just, is not located in your body, necessarily.

[10:06]

Consciousness can be outside your body. It can be outside and inside. So in that sense it's not located. And it can be, you know, unlimited. Or it can be very, very, very, very vast, and the one place it isn't is in your body. It's everywhere but your body. So consciousness is different from, for example, sensitivity to light, which is one place and not another place. consciousness can move around. Consciousness can pervade your whole body, part of your body, or be entirely out of your body. And also, its location is only in terms of physical things. You can't locate consciousness in terms of consciousness. So, consciousness is just associated with things that are located, and they're located because they can be hit by other things that have material forms.

[11:16]

So, consciousness is non-material, and the mental... So they don't have location... If you say that it's not in the body, that would be a location. But you can't say consciousness isn't in the body or isn't the body. At a given moment, you may feel like, I feel like it's in the body now. So at that moment, you may feel like consciousness is located. But what's the location of consciousness? The location of consciousness is physical. So consciousness has no location other than referring it to some physicality. Physical things do have locations. they're there and not someplace else, whereas consciousness, you can't really say for sure that it's somewhere else. It can be vast, really, really vast, or really, really small. Consciousness can actually have no location at all, not even associated with any place or any physical thing. It can be so small you can't find it anywhere, or on any kind of measure.

[12:21]

Well, it's not the same with physical things. That's what I mean by consciousness isn't located. Does that make sense? Yes. And so then when a person dies and their consciousness no longer has the support of the five skandhas... Say it again? When a person... When a person dies... Yes. ...and their consciousness does not have the support of this physical occasion... Uh-huh. and consciousness that they made is shaped by their past actions. Yes. And this consciousness is no longer supported by or shaped by sense organs. So consciousness arises in relationship to physical things.

[13:26]

There may be some consciousness which has no basis in physical things, but human consciousness arises from the interaction of sense organs and some physical sensitivity to light. It's like at that place where light, not just as light, but light somehow interacts with some other kind of physicality that responds to it. That dance gives rise. That's where consciousness is born. And that's a dependent core rising of consciousness. Light interacting with some tissue that responds to it. mechanical waves in air, or some other gaseous medium, or some liquid medium interacting with some physicality that responds to that, gives rise to consciousness.

[14:33]

In this case it's called ear consciousness. And so on. That's the dependence on consciousness through the interaction of organ and field. When there's not an association, when organs aren't interacting anymore, like in a body that's, we call it, dead, then the light comes into the organ, but the eye doesn't get used to it. The light still enters this area, but the tissue doesn't respond the same way. It loses its... It still responds a little bit, but nothing like it did when the body was so-called alive. and it's like there's a reciprocal reaction there that when the consciousness somehow doesn't arise in the interaction between the sensitivity and the light, when the consciousness doesn't arise there, the sensitivity loses its potency in some sense.

[15:37]

Because the eye of some beings is very sensitive, and very responsive, that responsiveness and the interaction of those energies enlivens this non-physical event called consciousness. And when the consciousness disperses from the physicality or withdraws from that location, then the physicality also loses its responsiveness. So the eye organ isn't really functioning unless consciousness comes with it. for a human. We call it a dead human. It's a dying human or dead human when the consciousness isn't associated with the eye anymore. And when the consciousness is associated with it, you can either say it's almost like the consciousness gives life to the organ, but also the organ gives life to the consciousness. In terms of evolution, first there were sensitivities, then there was consciousness.

[16:42]

Because some already in nature there's some kinds of physicality that are different from other kinds of physicalities. And the way that light interacts with tissue is not the same way that light interacts with tissue. The way light interacts with a leaf is not the same way that light interacts with light. And light and sound, the way they interact, is not the way sound interacts with tissue, is not the way, like a eardrum, is not the way that sound interacts with sound. When sound interacts with sound, the interaction is that the rhythm of the sound waves, of the pulses in the air, interact is they make more of each other. or less of each other, right?

[17:45]

Do you know what I mean? Sound waves, like, they make each other stronger or weaker. Do you know what I mean? Well, like, they reinforce or undermine each other. If you have sound waves, you know, going together, and they get lined up one way, they make each other stronger. If they get lined up another way, they cancel each other. Because they're actually physical things. in space and they either, like, support each other or they interfere with each other. Right? Force and interfere. Interfere or reinforce. Resonate? Huh? Resonate? Weak. Resonates, yeah, resonates another phenomenon, but strictly speaking in terms of waves, when the waves are lined up one way, the waves get bigger. When they line up another way, they cancel each other. You know what I mean? Familiar with that? It's like waves on the beach. Yeah. You have waves like this. If you have a wave like this and you send out another wave, If you send it out at the right time, it'll reinforce, the waves will get bigger.

[18:49]

If you send it out at another time, call it a phase with it, then the waves will cancel each other and go flat. Same with water waves, same with sound waves. But when they interact anyway, they make more of each other. They don't make a different kind of a phenomenon. But when sound waves touch tissue, it doesn't interfere or reinforce the sound wave. The sound wave just transmits its energy into the tissue, and the tissue starts creating its of that. It's not more sound waves then. It's a tissue wave. And tissues that can respond to sound waves, we call it ear organs, But our whole body responds to sound waves, of course. You can knock somebody over and break glass with sound waves, right? But this part is the part that's most responsive, most alive, so that when this thing starts going, that's what gives rise to ear consciousness.

[19:49]

But we don't say ear consciousness arises when the sound wave hits our fingernails. So a dead person in the wake, what happens when sound waves hits the fingernails? ...that different from the way sound waves hit a live person. That's because it doesn't seem like the auditory consciousness, ear consciousness doesn't seem to arise at the interaction between sound waves and fingernails. You take fingernails off and ear consciousness can arise fairly well. ...screen and take the fingernail off. But if you remove this part of the body, ear consciousness can't arise. and so on. Okay? So that's just a little bit on the dependent core rising of consciousness in relation to physical phenomena. Another example of dependent core rising is Linda was talking about a sense of herself. If she thinks of herself, she thinks of talking.

[20:51]

The self is not the others, then the self is concerned with how others feel about her, how what she says looks to others, and then there's anxiety. Anxiety, then that's hard to stand, so then maybe that changes things into what's going to happen. Maybe strictly speaking, I should say that before she even thought of doing anything in the future, she was feeling some anxiety of being separated from all beings. Then she thinks of doing something that she hasn't done yet in the future. Then she thinks... She puts the thing in the future and feels fear. This is a dependent core rising of fear. So... There isn't really a thing called fear without these ingredients. There isn't really a thing called anxiety without these ingredients. If you take away any of those ingredients, you don't have anxiety. Another example, which I told some people recently, is a dependent co-arising of the sense that somebody's a liar. So let's say I look at you, Edie,

[21:54]

and I have no idea that you're a liar. And then maybe somebody comes and tells me that she's a liar. They say, I don't trust her. I say, why don't you trust her? They say, because she's a liar. I say, oh, she's a liar? Oh, I didn't know that. Well, what do you mean she's a liar? And then they tell me something, some story about you. And I think, oh, that's interesting. But I think, well, if you did something like that, I can see why this person would think you're a liar. And then I can see why they think you're a liar. I don't think you're a liar. And then they... And then maybe they can tell that I'm not quite convinced, you know. But although I think what they said is reasonable, it bears on the argument of you being a liar, I still don't quite get the feeling that you're a liar. So what's happened is that given my sense of you and this person telling me that, and I also probably think that this person is not lying to me, And the story sounds like something that could have happened. But I still don't quite... What's dependently co-arisen is now I have a slightly different view of you as somebody who might have done that act.

[23:01]

So then they... This is a story that actually happened to me. And then a person told me another thing. A second thing. When he told me the second thing, I started to feel a little bit more substance to this person that he was talking about being a liar. And then she told me a third thing that was more substantial. And then she told me a fourth thing that the person did, and it got more substantial. And by the fourth thing, it kind of like came into focus, and I actually could see the liar. I mean, I could see the person was a liar. But almost at the same instant that I could see how she kind of like brought, conjured up this liar right in the stories, in the same way I could see that by the very fact of all these ingredients, there wasn't anything called a liar there. The sense of liar had been conjured up by, I guess, my agreement that this person that she was talking about was an existent person. I knew where this person lived. So these stories occurred in an environment that made sense to me, that the stories could have happened there.

[24:07]

All those things came together, and then there was this image of this liar that was created, and a tangible thing, kind of like I could feel. by supporting these things. But I could see that, because you see, it was this last piece then, I could feel like the last piece was fit in, the last story fit in, and then suddenly, kook! There it was. I could also see that if you took this last piece away, it wouldn't be there. But the whole thing, this whole lyre thing was hollow. It was just these pieces. And like, boom! Boom, boom, boom, boom, and there's nothing left. But still, by putting these various elements in, you can actually finally clunk into it and feel like it is real. But the very way that you get a sense of something is that you have enough elements to come into place, and you can see that if you take away some of them, the remaining three or ten or a million, whatever they are, wouldn't be enough.

[25:12]

or you have that substantiality. And in fact, there's lots of things in the world that we think of, and here we don't necessarily feel they're real. So the dependent core rising is such that it hasn't got to the point where we're attributing substance to what we're feeling. But the funny thing is, The reason why we can't feel substance yet is that the thing doesn't have enough conditions. The thing doesn't have enough to be something by itself. And when we give it more, it needs more to be something that doesn't need more. So then when we give it more, it doesn't feel like it exists by itself. When we give it more, then we finally feel like it exists by itself. So this is the confusion of the way our mind works. That the very things that have the most evidence are the things we're surest about.

[26:14]

And the things that have the most evidence are the things that need the most evidence because we wouldn't believe that they have the most evidence. It's just like when people are insecure about whether they're right or not or whether what they're doing is good then they need to feel that what they're doing is right and correct and certain. So, like, for example, kill beings, but you're not sure that it's really all that good not to kill, then you've got to be sure that it's absolutely wrong to kill. But if you don't have... I have a question. From the example, that sounds like a composition, a composed reality, whereas I was thinking that dependent colorizing was the way it really works, not the little way, not the little story that we're stuck in, but the way things really work.

[27:29]

Whereas your examples seem to be another story that we've made up, we've composed it of these various elements until we're convinced. The pinnacle arising is just a story. Another story. Yeah, that's the way things work. Things work just by stories. All things are just stories. Things are no more than stories, including what I just said. Aside from stories, there are... in the universe. And that's a story. So I should not be... I don't... It's fruitless for me to look to understanding dependent co-emerging as the solution to my delusions. No, it is a solution to your delusion. That's the story I'm telling you. And that's a story that Buddha told, too, that... The solution to your delusion is to realize that your delusions are built, are dependently co-arisen.

[28:33]

And if you can see the story that gives rise to your delusions, if you understand that story as nothing more than a story, you'll be free of your delusions. And also understand that the instruction that you just received about that is another story. So you use a story to realize that your stories are nothing more than that. But people don't think their stories are just stories. They think some stories are real. Including the story that freedom is something. Rather than freedom is something better than more stories. And we think that freedom is better than bondage. But if you think that, you're back in bondage. Yes? I always get a little confused about this story.

[29:34]

Which story? Well, about the construction of the lion. I mean, I can see that if you take the thing away, it would be a liar. It would be something else. It would be two things. It would be the argument leading... Someone's arguing and trying to convince me that someone's a liar, but they haven't quite convinced me yet. That's what's happening before the story. So, is the point of the story just to see how it gets constructed? Because I have this question like this, well, how do I deal with the thing? I see them half-constructed the way I see them. Like, for example, if I feel threatened by someone, like they're going to beat me up. So then I can't imagine how I would take, well, if I would take a piece of stick in their hand, they wouldn't beat me up, so it's not happening.

[30:43]

Right? I would still have to deal with that. So you got this person there who is big enough to hold a stick, and maybe they look angry, and so you're saying you don't see the point of thinking about taking away the stick, I don't see, I don't know what... I mean, I can still think, well, this is all the heavenly core rising, but then I still have to react to it. I mean, I can't just stand there and say, well, this is just a construct, and I just take away the anger, and then I'm like beaten up. This is not so much talking about karma in response to this,

[31:48]

I'm not talking about what your karmic response should be once you see something. Okay? So, if you think this thing is happening, it's up to you about what kind of karma you're doing. What if I see this person as a liar? Then it's up to you. It's another discussion about what you're going to do when you see this vision of a liar. Okay? The question right now is, you see this liar, you see the elements coming together to create the liar, but you don't see the liar yet. Like you see the man looking angry and big and strong, and then suddenly you see a stick in his hand, and then suddenly this person is dangerous. Maybe somebody is telling you, this person is dangerous, and you're looking and you don't quite see it. I don't quite see they're angry. You say... Well, actually they have a stick behind their back too.

[32:50]

And you see, oh yeah, they got a stick. Suddenly then, clunk, you know, you didn't see it. Okay. You didn't see the stick and how you didn't really believe they're that dangerous. You see, you feel, you feel a tangible sense of, oh, they're dangerous. Okay. Now you say, what would it do me any good to sort of imagine that they don't have the stick? Well, it's hard to do in this case because, you know, they do have the stick. Rather than just being told they have the stick. But let's say you would sort of imagine that they didn't have the stick. Okay? Let's say you would imagine that. Then what would happen? And you'd maybe realize that this appearance of their dangerousness is dependent on all the ingredients there. And now that all the ingredients are there, you feel... But you sense that this danger is something put together by this, and it doesn't have the same substantiality.

[33:51]

When these elements are there, now you say, now what do you do? Is there going to be any difference in the way you respond to the person, given what you're seeing there is not so substantial? It's different. For example, you can take the stick away and then you're not convinced anymore. or you can go away from the situation. And then, since they have a stick rather than a high-powered rifle, they no longer are so dangerous. They're only dangerous when they're close. So suddenly they change. And your flexibility increases a great deal when you start seeing that thing. You're not locked into this thing so much. You realize the dependent core rising of it. You have freedom. And you also realize that this person is not this fixed thing because if you take away any of the elements, in fact, they are different. If the person is disarmed and it looks and their face changes, the thing is gone.

[34:55]

And it can come right back if these ingredients are put together. And you see, this is like seeing how the world of appearances is created. And you start flowing with things. without putting this extra energy into believing something's there in addition to these conditions. There isn't a dangerous person there in addition to all those ingredients. But when those ingredients are there, you go, boom! When the ingredients are there, you do have a real solid sense of things. You can't help it. But there isn't actually something there. It's a solid sense created by the elements. And it's affected in that moment and then changed into something else. Right. And the same thing happens, of course, to our sense of our self, that we, there's various conditions that give rise to a sense of our self or of consciousness being located or this body, you know, arms and legs as being the body, all this stuff, there's causes and conditions which come together to create that.

[35:57]

Even with arms and legs, there's causes and conditions coming together to give you a sense that you do have arms and legs, right? People have amputations, they still feel like they have arms and legs. People who aren't fat think they're fat. And there's causes and conditions of thinking they're fat, namely, at a certain point in their life, various things people call fat. How they looked in the mirror and they thought they were fat. And then they lose a lot of weight, they're skinny, and they still think they're fat. But this causes conditions of how they happen to think they're fat. And somebody else... who looks about the same as them, feels like they're very skinny, and that they should gain weight, because they always were skinny when they were kids, or whatever. So, you know, the fundamental thing is, anyway, is self. If you can understand that, all this other stuff starts breaking apart. If you hold on to that one, and we tend to keep projecting the self out on things, and when we project the self out on things, it's harder for us to practice meditation on the pinnacle horizon.

[36:59]

It's impossible. The place where it's particularly efficacious to apply it is at the source of the non-application. The place we first don't apply it is when we ignore dependent core arising and make a self. And again, not only do we use the self to create the self, but there is a dependent core arising of our making of the self. We have a history which makes us prone to ignore dependent core arising and look at entities and create entities. So we create entities by dependent core arising and also our tendency to create them is also for basically our history as animals and our education, our social life together. And again, it is, I think, it is socially, a long time ago it was socially advantageous to be able to think of being a person, of being a self, of being independent.

[38:03]

That served our ancestors. And they had advantage over the other animals who couldn't think of that. Especially, first of all, among the other humans, the other primates that they lived with that had not thought of that. They ascended. They had this psychic innovation or psychological breakthrough that made them the leaders of their group. And so pretty soon, their descendants took over, and the people who didn't have descendants are gone now. I mean, we don't have descendants of them anymore. However, the other animals that were living around them had a different reproductive arena, so they didn't have to make self in order to survive, because none of them had that breakthrough. But when the other animals have the breakthrough, if they live in , it'll probably be an advantage to them too. So we have genetic background which supports us, which pressures us to create a self, and then we have a way of creating a self, and then when the self is created, then there's karma,

[39:17]

And then they go through these stories of karma. And karma also creates a story of rebirth. It's all illusion, but it is lawful illusion. You know, which we're, you know, we go through this. It's not like it's true, but we go through a true process. And the more we study it, the more we understand it's illusory quality and the more we're free of it. But again, it's hard to study it because the whole process is pain. There's lots of joy in the midst of the process, which is all right. I don't think the joy is any more distracting than the pain. But there is a lot of joy in the process too. Function of keeping, also keeping the process going.

[40:23]

To encourage us to keep playing the game, which is so painful. Like, you know, a woman has a baby, it's extremely painful to have it. And then what comes out is this thing which couldn't possibly be cuter. And I've observed, this is my opinion, but I've observed that in areas of high population, like overcrowding and poverty, the babies are cuter than... Like in India, you know, like in Calcutta, in the total intense hell pit of Calcutta, the most beautiful babies are born. Whereas like up in Norway, you know, with the beautiful landscapes, plenty of food, you know, You can't see people for miles. The babies are kind of ugly. Now, of course, the people in Norway think that they're cute. Like, the cutest, right?

[41:26]

But they're not actually as cute as the babies in Calcutta, from my point of view. But in Norway, since it isn't so horrendous to have another baby when you already have 16 and you can't feed any of them, babies don't have to be that cute to encourage you. So, you know, like... But most of the Norwegian mothers don't get to see the Calcutta babies, so they think their baby's the most gorgeous in the world. But anyway, once you see the baby, you say, oh, it's worth it. Right? Somewhat. You say it's worth it, but you say, no more. Then you forget the pain and see how cute. So then acute plus no pain, forgetting the pain, then try it again. So we keep the process by this joy. Isn't being a mother the most difficult thing in the world?

[42:28]

And doesn't it get a lot of support? Doesn't the baby give you a lot of joy? And isn't there nothing more than being a mother? And Father's, you know, not so easy, but it's so lovely that we're willing to make the effort. We're willing to do extremely painful things for this being which is so wonderful. That part keeps me going. The other people we have trouble with, you know, We don't have quite as much trouble, but still there's little joys there to keep us going, too. But sometimes people, San Francisco, of course, is the place where so many people come from all over the country who just can barely stand it anymore, and they hope there'll be some hope. So many high suicide rates, very high here in San Francisco. Because it's the last stop?

[43:33]

I think it's the last stop. People don't like leave San Francisco and go to New York to try to find a new life so much. If they leave, you know, Pittsburgh and Des Moines and New York and particularly, you know, Newark. They don't like to leave Newark. Maybe they go to Newark and go to New York and then go to California. But anyway, California is like a last hope kind of for a lot of people, right? It's in the right direction. Now, they do tend to channel the people over on the bay side of the Golden Gate Bridge rather than the ocean side. There's encouragement for most people walk on the bay side. On the other side, it's kind of easier to get there because the buses drop you off and stuff. So there's some reason why most people... You might say, well, most people jump off the bayside because it's just easier to be on the bayside.

[44:33]

But almost all the people jump off on the bayside of the bridge. I don't think pedestrians are allowed on the coast. They are, but it's a little bit less encouraged on the ocean side. Sometimes you're not allowed. But still, these people are not ordinary cooperative pedestrians. And almost all of them jump off on the oceans on the bay side. In one particular section. Really? Yeah. Where they've now built... For some reason, it's like that section is impacted. I'm sorry, that fence was built as an experiment. That section. And as a response to see if the public would accept a fence, which was supposed to be a suicide fence, was put up 18 years ago. The public would not accept it and said, if they want to jump, let them jump. You don't want a fence up. In the last month, they decided to put a fence up. A big one? All the way? All the way.

[45:35]

Both sides. And the complaint has been, actually, it's different when you look through a fence. Oh, it does. I don't know if it will happen because the last time they tried, there was a huge outcry. And the reality is, if people really want to jump, they'll crawl across the top of the fence and jump. Couldn't we have a plexiglass wall? Everybody who goes around the bridge gets connected to a bungee cord. Locked in. So anyway, it's... So I just wanted to tell you some kind of Buddhist history stuff. There are some Buddhists who don't think rebirth is really, you know, who kind of like try to either refute it or some kind of like... But no Buddhist schools disagree with rebirth.

[46:36]

But there are different views of how it happens. All Buddhist schools, and I guess some Buddhists maybe also don't, people who want to be Buddhist don't want to take karma into account. I think a lot of people who come to Zen practice actually don't want to deal with karma. They just want to sit and, you know, be free, which is nice, right? Go right ahead. It works. They don't want to deal with karma, and that's okay too, but most Buddhist schools anyway recognize karma as an important topic. And almost all the different schools agree that what karma is, is volition. It's just chetana. That character means thinking, volition. They all agree that that's what the nature of karma is. And that the key is that there's a belief in the self behind there. There's a belief in an actor. and there's inaction, and that's karma.

[47:43]

But there's some disagreement about the next two phases, about retribution and the retributive entity. There's a school of Buddhism, an important school of Buddhism, called Mahajamaka, and they say that actually no action is ever completed. That there's no such thing as a complete act. That thinking doesn't get completed and be an act. And therefore, there's no retribution. And since there's no retribution, retributive entity. There's nobody who gets the retribution. That's called the Madhyamaka school. They don't deny karma. And they also don't deny that karma creates the world. So they say there is no complete act, but there is still this Adam and Eve, and we aren't completed yet?

[48:53]

No, they say there is no completed karma, there is no complete act, therefore there is no retribution. They don't say there is no karma. They say there's no completed karma. So what they're saying is, it's just an ongoing process of karma. It's not resolved. It's not resolved. So there's just this ongoing process of karma. There's karma every moment, and what it is, is it's thinking. But it doesn't, like, actually go anywhere. And in fact, that's right. It doesn't go anywhere. It's just an illusion that it goes anywhere. It just looks like it's going somewhere. In some ways, this school is, you know, has something going for it. This school is us, isn't it? The Madhyamaka school? No, this is Zen school here. We use them all. Primarily good.

[49:57]

Huh? Primarily for that. I mean, well... You mean like primarily... Yeah, primarily. You mean like kind of we use that more than other schools? Yeah. You mean like that's our favorite? That's our favorite? Yeah. Well, maybe it is our favorite. But the thing about Zen is, although it may play favorites... It's not attached to his favorites. It's like everyone has their favorite story. Right. But the essence of Zen is... But still, being, you know, imperfect Zen students, we do our favorites. Sorry. We actually do, there is some tendency among a lot of Zen students to prefer enlightenment, bliss, and freedom over delusion. Cover your ears, those of you who don't want to hear this.

[51:02]

Delusion. There is a tendency among some Zen students, but among Zen masters, there's no preference like that. And even maybe some Zen masters still aren't perfect, so they still prefer enlightenment. Some actually prefer delusion, just to sort of like be difficult. Really, ideally, is no preference, no picking and choosing. We don't pick enlightenment over delusion. We don't pick freedom over bondage. Okay? It's the middle way, right? Why choose something that's free of existence and non-existence and, you know, hang on to it, right? But still, in terms of like, what do you call it, airtime, my jamaica gets more attention than... And look how nice it is. See, this way is, Madhyamaka is, there is, there is this karma. What is karma? Karma is volition. It's the way you're thinking.

[52:02]

There is thinking. Of course, thinking dependent core arises and is empty, right? So if you just study karma as it happens and watch how dependent core arises, it empties right in the spot. So there isn't, there is no karma. Who said that? Who is the evil one that said that? Don't point at her. But anyway. That's called the extreme view of non-existence. Buddha did not teach that karma does not exist. That's an extreme view. These are not Buddha's disciples. To say that Buddha taught that karma exists, that's not right either. Buddha taught the middle way about everything, including karma. What's the middle way of karma? Karma is volition. What's volition? It's empty of self-existence. So the Madhyamaka school says, don't worry about getting into like this, [...] this volition never really completes itself. It's just an impulse. It's just a tendency of the moment. It doesn't, it can't complete itself because it's just changed and now here's another one. How volition happens. And understand it completely.

[53:03]

You're free from karma right at that time. Free of karma, then you're free of the source of karma, you're liberated. But you have to study karma. Madhyamaka will agree, what are we studying? Studying karma. Thinking. So you study thinking. So Madhyamaka studies thinking, but it doesn't have to even get into, like, where does it go and stuff, but that doesn't go anywhere. This is one approach to studying karma, which I haven't talked about too much during this class, because I want you to know that some other people watch how, if you don't empty karma on the spot, and don't know, and sort of want to like terminate it and make it into a thing, then it's a complete act. And if you make it into a complete act, then there are consequences. You see? How? By making it into an entity.

[54:06]

So, if you don't empty karma And even the Madhyamakas, of course, are still falling for this. They personally, as normal human beings, they don't empty karma. They make karma into free. Retribution and who gets the results. They would fall into that too. This technique, this way of not making it, of saying to their students, it's not a complete act, means try to free yourself from thinking of it in terms of a complete act. Study it until you see that it never completes. and then there's no result, and you're free of that chain, and then it kind of empties. So the statement that it's not a complete act is for people, normal people, who think karma does get completed and there are results. The other schools, instead of cutting it like that, they say, okay, let's study the whole process. There's another way. If you study the whole process, even though it's an illusory process, you still can become liberated. Some people can't stop it right away.

[55:10]

They've got to go with it. That's most of what they're doing. So the other schools say, well, watch what you're doing. Watch how you're so caught in that. That will also lead to emptying the whole process. But ultimately, it might be better to cut it short and not get caught in the first place and empty it at the source. And Miffin thinks, well, we have a preference for that, don't we? Well, yeah, we do. But it's still, what if you don't cut it at the source? Then you have to study it as you get caught and flow out of there. And now I'll just mention parenthetically, before I answer Beverly's question, that there's different schools about how the retribution happens, and there's different schools about how, about who is the receiver of the retribution. And I might talk... Might not, but I think it would be nice to have a karma and rebirth two, which you people would be eligible for. I think, but some of you wouldn't show up for.

[56:11]

So in order, maybe I should do a couple more karma rebirth ones, and then from the three groups have a karma rebirth two. So probably somebody would show up out of those three groups. Because it gets sticky. I don't know who wants to get into the stickiness of the different interpretations and all stuff. This has been kind of a broad look at it. But there's considerable more detail. The basic teaching you got. Action, the nature of action, volition. Retribution, the rules of retribution are very simple. And basically, there's agreement on the basic rules, and then retributive entity. Those are the three basic things which everybody deals with. Even Madhyamaka, who says, crosses out the next two, because they know they have to, because Buddha talked about it. So they have to deal with it and say, yeah, Buddha talked about it, but there isn't just these two categories. Because it isn't, you know, because the point is, some people do think there are, so since they think there are, they suffer those worlds.

[57:18]

it might be nice then to have another course where we go into these different opinions in these different schools, supposedly Buddhist schools, who had quite different views about these next two phases. And it gets interesting. The point is to just go deeper and deeper into the study, and never-ending deepening of our understanding. And so, when you told your friends you're going to come to learn about karma, they said, rightly, I know about karma, they do know about karma. But what they may not know is that what they know is just scratching the surface, and that you can keep telling them year after year, well, I'm going to another... And they say, I know about karma. I used to know about karma too, but the way I know about it now is not the way I used to. My understanding is coming more and more into my life. So you do understand karma, but your level of understanding karma is... is what it is now. Your understanding could also get deeper. And they might say, no, it's the bottom, ultimate.

[58:22]

And you say, well, maybe you could give me a course. I wouldn't have to go all the way over to Gringo. Just help course. And then, you know, and they could start explaining karma to you. And then you could say, oh, that's interesting. And then you could talk to them and maybe the karma would come from them. And maybe they would learn a lot about karma by telling you. So then you'd be studying karma with them. So even though they know about karma, when they start talking to you, they learn more about karma. That's the point, okay? We all know something about karma. But the more we talk about it, the more likely is the chance that we'll pay some attention to what we're saying. Beverly? We have been endeavoring to practice... Karni? In endeavoring to practice the instruction this week, was the influence. I found myself in this category where I felt impelled before I had any time to think about it.

[59:23]

Like two and a half seconds, maybe I gave it half a second. That's pretty good. But I was going to do that thing no matter what. I mean, if I had time to think about it, I probably wouldn't have done a lot of the things that I did do. Yes. But either because or the desire and intention was so strong, for what reason? I know not. But I end up doing those things anyway. So do I sort of fall in that category that you're then talking about, that if you can catch yourself with the impulse, great, then you've got to sort of worry about the effect? Okay. And if you can't catch the impulse, but you can catch the effect, then you got that. Say, I couldn't see what the impulse was, but the effect is this. Or the impulse is this. Or the unwholesome effect. So maybe what the impulse was was something which, maybe I could say that there was an unwholesome impulse before this because I'm miserable.

[60:31]

Maybe there was a wholesome effect to impulse before this because I'm feeling good. Feeling good. And also, How do I feel? How is it affecting me? What does this good feeling do to me? What does this negative feeling do to me? So you can watch that too. So watch the effect and then how you experience it. And if you then... Your mindfulness then tends to beat back around to help you watch the impulse. And you may notice, I would predict, But if you start noticing wholesome effects and how they feel, one of the ways that wholesome results affect you is that the more wholesome effects you get, the more you're able to study the impulses. So one wholesome effect is to find yourself in an environment where people say, Beverly, believe it or not, it's okay if you take a lot of to consider each action you take.

[61:42]

Being in an environment where people say that to you and feeling that permission to really consider deeply would be a wholesome consequence of karma. When you do good karma, people say, hey, take your time. When you do bad karma, people say, don't take your time. Just stop that and shut up. And don't think. As a matter of fact, here, we're chaining you to the wall. So, any place you can catch the process, you're starting to cook. You're starting to study. And awareness at this point tends to promote awareness at the next phase. which tends to promote awareness at the source phase, which tends to increase wholesomeness. The wholesomeness tends to increase your ability to see how the result affects you. When you can see how the wholesome result affects you, you're aware of what's happening to you. When you're aware of what's happening to you, being aware of your impulses, you're more likely to understand the process. Now, sometimes you're aware of your impulse, but you still see a negative impulse and still act on it, but you learn from that.

[62:51]

Whereas if you're not aware of your impulse and you do a negative result and you're not aware of it, then you... If you're not aware of a negative impulse but you are aware of a negative response, you may still be able to learn. So the awareness anyway builds on awareness. So if you can be aware of consequence, you can... to the probable impulse, you can also see how you experience negative results, positive results, and the process starts to wake up. I've heard that, I've read it, I've felt it. People have told me this. It says so in the books. That's my experience. And also, if I reason about it beyond experience and beyond books and beyond what people tell me, it also makes sense. So, by reasoning scripture and experience, this is what I'm reporting.

[63:58]

This is my verbal comment. Okay? Do you want to try to get two in this time? I do. Okay. Because you had said that we'll also begin to see the shape of our mind or the shape of the process. That's the impulse. That is the impulse. The shape of the mind. Oh, okay. Because I can then work back and say, you know, oh, I see. I've done this one before. You might be able to tell by the result. It's possible to see the shape of your mind and see a result. Miss the shape of your mind, but see the result. And understand that when you get this result, your mind is that shape even though you missed it. You kind of know. And then the next time around, you might again see the shape and say, oh, this shape, I remember this shape was, I missed it last time, but the time before I saw it, and it led to the same result. Let's see what happens this time. Let's try it again. The shape of the mind, again, the shape of the mind in terms of karma is not just the shape, but it's the shape in terms of what is inclination.

[65:08]

I guess I have a question to number two, which is, doesn't that tend to sort of rigidify this sense of self? Or, well, because you begin... No, your sense of self could not be the least bit more rigidified. You're at maximum rigidity. Don't worry about making yourself more rigid. I haven't met people that have self. And I actually have met some people actually whose cells are not rigid enough. And they're in the phase of trying to rigidify their self. There's a few people like that. But you don't have to worry about that part. What you need to worry about... Actually, you don't need to worry. Worry actually is not helpful. What you need to do is... Getting to see how rigid your self is. You need to find out exactly what are the rigid... What are the rigid points of yourself? Where do you start and stop? You need to find out about that.

[66:12]

You don't need to worry about getting more rigid. The more rigid, the better. Do you mean discipline when you say rigid? No. The discipline is the discipline of studying how rigid yourself is, finding out what yourself is. And your self is right behind that karma. So, if you can look at the karma, you can find the self. Because the self is what you think. The self is what you're adding to this field. It's in the field. And it's a very definite thing. If it's not definite, then you don't think you can do anything, and you don't think it's karma. Yes? Going back to what you were saying about the tissue and the... sense organ and the sense field and the consciousness contact. When someone's dying, you were talking about the light, let's say, touching the eye and it doesn't, there's no consciousness after them.

[67:13]

Is it the tissue itself that stops consciousness, leaves? What is it that makes it at the end? Well, the dying process, actually, as you may know, before big-scale, you know, certified death, which is not real death anyway, just a death that we call Western medicine death, even before that, what happens is that this consciousness withdraws from the eyes, even before that. The consciousness pulls away. Yeah. Rather, the tissue sort of stops working. Yeah. The consciousness withdraws from inhabiting the eyes, and then the eye stops working. People say it's getting dark, right? It's one of the first to go. And the hearing goes. The sense of touch goes. The hands and feet get cold. People who are near death, like they're cold, their legs are all cold, and their arms get cold.

[68:15]

The sense organs start turning off. And the center of the body, you know. And when people are shocked, that happens too. Like a big strong young man can get a trauma. His consciousness withdraws from his arms and legs and eyes into the center of his body. He's still alive, still tremendous life force, but he's condensed. And if you don't pass the trauma and let the system have a chance, it won't re-inhabit the body. It can go like this. So big strong people who are traumatized can die like that, by just withdrawing and exiting. And weak people aren't traumatized, they're old and sick and dying, they do it more gradually, more generalized, gradual increase of trauma, they do it more slowly, and keeping them warm, they keep them warm too, but it doesn't go back out.

[69:19]

There's a shock, the system's over it, the life force re-inhabits the body and you're out in the shop. And they've got whatever, maybe a broken leg or whatever, but they've got plenty of life energy to re-inhabit and warm the body up. Of course, everybody has their limits, like, get really... Some people, the system starts doing all kinds of funny stuff to stop you from re-inhabiting. There's a very interesting article in this magazine called Outdoor Magazine, you know that magazine? It's about hiking and stuff, about hypothermia, and all the things the body does to keep you warm and... all the signals it does to distribute energy. It's very interesting. It's a very interesting body. Anyway, did you have more questions about that this time? Also, one other thing is that the conscious moves away from the eye, so the eye loses its function. Also, I think the eye would actually lose some of its... Probably if they test it, there would be some physiological changes too.

[70:26]

Once the conscious is left, it would begin to materialize faster. Yeah, I think. So if you find the person dead for a while, the way this area responds is different than the ordinary eye. And there may not be structural damage yet, but it would be interesting to research if they could test to see what happens to the cones and the rods and so on. How does the chemistry there change as the conscious moves away? Such research could be done, I think. Some Buddhists would offer themselves, not necessarily Buddhists, but someone who's interested in the dying process would offer themselves to have these cells monitored, the chemistry of these cells monitored when they say, now it's getting dark. and see what happens to those cells and how their responsiveness changes. Because this area, that's the thing about that area, it's got these special cells, right?

[71:28]

The rods and the cones. And they're very... They do all these fantastic things in response to light. And also, you also have this special little thing, is that the eyes... You know about that? We can do these voluntary movements of the eye like this. Like I'm now going to look to my left. Now I'm turning right. That's a voluntary movement. But superimposed involuntary movements are three other types of involuntary movements which are constantly going on. If the light comes into the eye and the eye doesn't move, the light stimulates retinal cells by touch. Electromagnetic radiation touches the retinal cells and sets them off. same cell again, it won't go on. It won't go on again until there's a break. If you do a break and go back to it, it'll go on again. Unless you move away from that cell and just keep the light on it, it'll go off once and then it'll go dark.

[72:31]

And it won't come back on as long as you keep the light on it. Do you know that? Interesting, huh? That's why you have to keep moving on the eye. And so this guy won a Nobel Prize for making this little, um, what do you call it, a little, uh, a little camera that could ride in a contact lens. So the contact lens would move with the eye and keep the light at the same spot. So the person had constant light on the eye and they couldn't see anything. And then as soon as you put a little gear into the contact lens so that the lens doesn't move with the eye, but lets the eye move under it, and then the light shines so that the eye can move, and then the light gets taken along with the movements of the eye, then the light shines all over the eye in these various patterns, and they can see again.

[73:38]

And also this charts the movements, too. So the movements are, there's a high-frequency movement, kind of like a high-frequency movement like this. And there's a bigger frequency movement that goes like this. More like a windshield wiper. And superimposed on this is... It's really... And then there's this general big shift, you know, that you can see sometimes. Coming in your eye, there's little bugs floating across your eye, you know those things? And you have light coming in. You ever see those? You can see this movement by watching the bugs. Bugs go, they go, they go like this, they come down, and then suddenly they disappear. But there's a gradual drifting, and then there's a sharp...

[74:39]

But you usually can't see the little vibration on the little bugs. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. You can't see the little... The bug's kind of squiggling. You usually can't see that so well, but there's a little squiggle in the bug. And there's a big ticking out of vision and bringing it back, ticking out of vision and bringing it back. And then there's a slow thing. And then, of course, you can do a voluntary motion too. So all that's necessary is a responsive area, right? This part of the body is very responsive to light, and it's got all these special cells that can do light colors and stuff like that, and black and white, and change according to the time of day, and all this. It's a very sensitive area. And those two, yes. So it's a very complex, receptive, responsive area, and so a consciousness arises with that, and it's a very highly evolved consciousness, and it's very important to us, which makes sense since it's It's so responsive. And the ear, too, is fantastic, as you know. It's amazing what it can do. And, of course, the conceivably magnificent field of responsiveness.

[75:47]

And it's the most basic one. All the sense organs are basically derivatives of steam, right? Touch. Touch is most basic. is basically a modification of the skin. The skin gets indented, the ear is a modification of the skin, the tongue, the nose, they're all involutions and specializations of skin, of touch. Which is again part of the duality of human beings is that it's actually fundamentally that we sense something. First of all, the body's touched. Then this is touched. Then this is touched. Then this is touched. When we're touched, we experience something. But our way of relating to it is dualistic. We feel like we're touched by something outside. Even though, when it's outside, we're not touched. When it's here, we feel it. When we experience it, it's out there. That's the basic thing that human beings can do. They can externalize what's happening to them.

[76:51]

and the same in our mind. What we actually got in our mind, we say, is outside of our mind. So, that's how we can dream up a whole universe. But if you study this process, you can be free and you don't even have to take breaks anymore. Like a prasangika majjamaka guy, he also accepts the story of rebirth and teaches that. But he's a majjamaka. And I appreciate the teaching of Madhyamaka. I just said it, and I thought it's very nice, and you can empty karma on the spot, but I think it's also good to teach how to meditate on this illusory process.

[77:58]

But you could be meditating on a process which philosophically you think is totally empty. and nonsense. But just call it nonsense. It's like that guy that came to see a psychiatrist and said, my brother thinks he's a chicken. And the psychiatrist says, well, why don't you tell him he's not a chicken? He said, I need the eggs. That's it. Whereas the Majamaka people say, you know, my brother thinks he's a chicken, and after I collect the eggs, I'm going to tell him he's a chicken. So first they collect the eggs, say he's a chicken, and then they wait until he forgets they said it, and they go collect him again.

[79:04]

So they're involved in the process like everybody else and helping people who are involved in the process like everybody else, but they keep telling people, you know, you're not a chicken. And they're not real eggs. They're not eggs. And you're not a self-existent chicken either. He's an owl. Yeah. He's a self-existent owl. Well, he's a luminous owl. He's a luminous owl. Oh, okay. A luminous owl means a dependent core is an owl. Yeah. Got a new name, Charlie. Defendantly clear as now. The world's longest Buddhist name. So... Do you know the spelling of the researcher you mentioned last night?

[80:12]

Because I tried to look it up on the internet. Is it W-A-M-B-A-C-A? Because there's a British scientist is what I found somewhere. What's the first name? It started with a J. Did you know what that was like? What was it, article? Yeah, I couldn't find... I couldn't... I haven't been able to find the books either, but I'll keep trying. And... Okay. Anything else at this time? Yes. I'm kind of interested in... Say it, but... But I have a question, and I'm afraid that if I don't ask it, that they ask.

[81:19]

So there's some story about rebirths that sort of satisfied me for a number of years, is that there is, well, it was told in terms of energy, like electric. could see it also as being this wider consciousness of life that is beyond what we can see and know. And that the past five senses kind of plugs into that in some way. that when they die they rejoin that larger field. But now what you're saying is that what's not supported by the five skandhas... Can I say something?

[82:27]

Yes. To me it's more like life in samsara is like a lapse from that space, that great space. It's like you drop down from that. You separate yourself from that vast interconnectedness and go back to it. That's more the way I'm seeing it. And you can have five senses up in that field, too. But when you make an entity, you take birth. And then when you stop making entity, you go back to that field where there's not entities. That's the way I'm saying. Rather than you're an entity and then you get to go to that realm, you know, that's our home. That interconnectedness is our home. But because we make entities and can make things separate from ourselves, we drop out of that world into the world of duality, of birth and death.

[83:34]

So it's not built in. Having as five sthanadas, it's not built in, it's separate. Built in? What's the part that's not built in? Well, in some sense, it seems that having... Could you specify what's not built in? What might not be built in? That what might not be built in, we don't... You're saying it... that you don't have to be... I would say it's built in, but sometimes it's not activated. Okay? And in that case you won't drop into the world of birth and death. The other case is, even when you're activated and you've dropped into the world of birth and death, if you understand the process, you're free of the illusion of separation. But it's built into humans to be able to conjure up this sense of internal, external. It's built into us in this whole huge of life.

[84:41]

Some beings have the built-in ability, the bodily, you know, inheritance to feel separate from other life, even feel separate from their own experience. That's built in. And based on that ability to separate, we create And based on that, we come into the world of birth and death. So it's built in that we come into the world of birth and death, but we also have in the background this world where we're not separated. And that's not the world of birth and death. That's constant in the background, the world of birth and death is this vast, interconnected, non-separated space. So it's built in that we will descend into the world of birth and death, and when we die we'll leave it, and then we'll come back again to it. Round and round we'll go. And when you die, some people feel that in the intermediate zone you're in this space of interconnectedness, and it's quite pleasant.

[85:44]

But you can only stay there so long, and according to this story I read last night, the happier you get up there, the closer you get to coming back. It's like just when you've pretty much recovered from birth and death... all rejuvenated, had a nice vacation. Climax of your vacation, the highest point, that's when you come back. And then you stay for a while, then you go back. But if you can understand the process, you can descend and go back free of the process. So even while you're in the world of separation, you're not free. So you can teach non-separation to those who are in separation, And to those who are not in separation, you can bring them back to sorrow of the world of separation and let them know that they may have to go there sometime themselves. But the ones who get to go, really, with some presence, are the ones... So bodhisattvas come into the world of birth and death happily, to play. Other beings go unconscious.

[86:51]

and come back. So they find themselves in the world of birth and death, and they say, how did I get here? God. You know? They blank. If you can remember that you chose to be here, then even though you're here, somehow you feel buoyed up. Even if you feel like, how did I get here? And you remember, oh, I chose to be here, for I choose to think of myself as someone who chose to be here. Then it's as though you chose to be here. Then it's as though you came for fun, to help people. You can't remember that you chose. One time somebody said, one of our members said, she was really suffering, she said, when I'm really suffering, sometimes I remember why I came. So some people say, when you're really suffering, you remember why you came to Zen Center, right? But also, I remember why she came into this world. But you didn't come in because you were suffering, you came in because you were happy. happy to come and be with suffering people and play with them.

[87:53]

That's the story. That's the vision I'm... So it's not too different? No, you just have it tipped upside down. You're looking from... I guess you're looking from... You're looking from samsara. I'm looking from nirvana. I'm saying from nirvana. In nirvana we have the equipment to come into samsara. for a while. In other words, you can be in nirvana and be like us. You can be like you and be in nirvana. You can have all your equipment of delusion and be in nirvana. It's just that either you aren't using them or you aren't fooled by them, one or the other. So nirvana is prior to or after realizing the separations and delusion which your equipment set up. then you're back in your vana. If you have bodhisattva vows, you're driven back into samsara to learn how to love, work out your relationship, learn more, teach more, and then 12% other.

[89:06]

Learn Sanskrit, play a little bit more, volleyball, I don't know if I'm really convinced that death is a vacation. Pardon? I don't know that I'm convinced about that. Oh, okay. You don't have to be. Nice to have people like you around. Zen Master Ikkyu, he has this beautiful poem, Skeletons, and in that poem he says, even death is a new vacation. Oh, but when he says it, you're convinced? Pardon? You know what Ikkyu's name means? It means... His name means... One... Yeah. A moment of pause in this thing.

[90:08]

As you go round and round in birth and death, there's a pause. I don't know what you want to say to pause it, but that's his name anyway. Just a pause. It means, his name means actually, one vacation. Q. Q. E. E is one, and Q means vacation. It's Yasumi. Oh, Yasumi Nasai. Have a rest, have a vacation. His name means one vacation. So he can speak even in death. is not a vacation, but there is a vacation in death, or there is a vacation. There's a place of pause, a place of vacation. But it's just a pause, you know, it's just either a pause, a vacation, or a rest. There's just a little rest as you go around and around. It's a rest point, which is, you know, I mean, a real rest point. And then, as a bodhisattva, you dive back in to the land of skeletons and dance with them, you know. He danced with those skeletons. He was having a ball. They were creepy.

[91:13]

He was spooked, but he danced. His Zen master wrote this thing called Skeletons, where he was staying at a temple and the skeletons got up out of the graves and started moving around. He had a little skeleton party with them. It was kind of creepy, but... Well, the way I took it was that he had a visual. That's a good way to take it. Even if it does. Yeah, it doesn't mean that when you're on vacation It doesn't mean these people who said it was quite pleasant being dead that they were like loafers. They wouldn't be able to report that it was pleasant if they weren't present. So, just to clarify again, I think you said this yesterday, but it was a new understanding, just to make sure, one can realize or enter nirvana and then still come back in a new body.

[92:19]

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Or is that just a Mahayana teaching? Yeah, right. Is that, I mean, is that... Well, Theravada, let's see, Buddha, the question is, did Buddha attain nirvana in any of his past lives? Right. Looks like he did. Sorry. Really? Yeah. In the early teachings? Yeah. I mean, didn't it sound like he was always... Yes? I thought of it as like he was always this bodhisattva, and he didn't until that life. Well, what do you mean by nirvana? You mean like we don't come back? Delusion. Wasn't that the first life that that happened? Some of the stories sound like it happened before.

[93:26]

The final life of Shakyamuni Buddha, he wasn't just an arhat, he was also a Buddha. He could have been an arhat before. Now, people say, well, but arhats don't get reborn. Well, he wasn't an arhat then. But he was a bodhisattva, perhaps, that had the same understanding as an arhat. Do you understand? Well, they say it was an arhat too. No, in his final birth he was an arhat. Arhats understand sufficiently to become personally free. Okay? Arhat understanding. Arhat understanding is... The arhat is one who's burned out, who doesn't come back. Okay? Supposedly. their understanding is sufficient to become free of karma. So they can walk around on this planet without doing any karma. For the rest of that bodily life. For the rest of that bodily life. There's no more body. And then towards the end of that life they get this burnout syndrome where they have to kind of get sick and stuff to burn off any residual karma, and they don't get reborn.

[94:29]

Okay? That's the arhat thing. That understanding, however, is attained also by bodhisattvas and buddhas. Not all bodhisattvas, but many gazillions of bodhisattvas have the same understanding as well as arhats do. Wouldn't the understanding is not the definition of an arhat? No, it's not the definition of an arhat. The definition of an arhat is that understanding plus not coming back. Because prior they're still around. But they have understanding they're liberating from karma. And they're walking around looking like a human. So an arhat could choose to come back. It's not like they have to. They could change their mind at the last minute if they met a Buddha who told them, like in the Lotus Sutra, if they met a Buddha who said, you guys don't have to sail for an arhat ship and just, you know, cool out. You can come back, work for several million lifetimes, and become a Buddha. You got it in you, kid.

[95:32]

It's not automatic that an arhat... Like, maybe they want to come back and they're struggling, but it's too late. It would be automatic if they hadn't got tipped off to the possibilities, they probably would go right into that. Because they're practicing so well, okay, this karma would become matured and there would be no impulse for them to be reborn. They wouldn't dip down again into birth and death. Impulses, they just would snuff out and be back in there. But if they have that vow beforehand and are... If somebody tipped them off, if a Buddha, for example, or a great Bodhisattva met them and said, hey, we've got something for you. And then they said, oh, great. And then the vow came up and the vow would bring them back. and they probably wouldn't have the uncomfortable burnout at the end either. So they wouldn't maybe be called an arhat, they just wouldn't be seen with the understanding of an arhat? Bodhisattvas have to have that understanding. Technically speaking, there's all knowledge, sarva-jnana, arhats have that, buddhas have that, great bodhisattvas.

[96:41]

Next level is sarva-marga-jnana, knowledge of all paths, bodhisattvas have that. Then there's sarva-akara-jnana, the knowledge of all modes. Buddhists have that. Of all modes? Of all modes. So Buddhists have all knowledge, knowledge of all paths, knowledge of all modes of all paths, of all knowledge. Total, you know. And the difference between our heart and the Buddha's, our heart and the Buddha's, Buddha has great compassion. So bodhisattvas, you know, that diagram, they go up and attain, they come down and transform. They go up and attain nirvana, they attain liberation from self-concern and karma, they come down back into the world to transform beings, nirvana, they come down into samsara, they go round and round like that.

[97:45]

When they go up into nirvana, before they go up into nirvana, they vow to save all beings. So when they get to nirvana, they don't forget. You know, they're up there and they're on vacation, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I vowed to go back and help all sentient beings clean the refrigerator. So they come back down, happy. Come back down and stay, you know, and get totally confused. They go back to Nirvana. So, you know, they keep clear that, you know, they don't come back and get totally hung up and forget the job they came to do. So they go back to Nirvana again. Or they're in the midst of doing a job. Yeah. But sometimes they maybe actually have to go because they kind of can't see.

[98:47]

I know Nirvana is here somewhere, but just a second. Which could be instantaneous. Could be instantaneous. Could just... Maybe not. And they get new bodies when they actually die, they can die, because bodhisattvas don't live indefinitely in samsara. They go according to the rules of samsara. They don't live, you know, maximum 120 years, approximately. 20 years more than the usual limit. Then they die, and they come back with a new body. Because one of the main things that bodhisattvas do to help people is they talk. And when you get really old, you lose your voice, you know. So, but maybe now they can live longer because they can click them to computers and, you know, magnify their voices. So if those improvisators are, have, are also arhats, then every time they come back from then on, they'll be born as an arhat then, right?

[99:55]

What? Born with an arhat's understanding. They can't forget an arhat, right? Yeah, they come back with arhat understanding, right. But what's arhat understanding when you're a teenager, you know? So, you know, you're put to the test. Most arhats are past that test, you know. If you put them back to teenagers, land. So, anyway, but anyway, Buddha understands as well as arhat. Arhat actually understands as well as Buddha, in a way. But arhats don't have great compassion, therefore they're not Buddhas. And in order for an arhat to become a Buddha, an arhat would have to practice great compassion, and practice great compassion for her wife. And you can't practice great compassion in death as well as you can in samsara, because samsara is really, you know, up there where everybody's interconnected, and, you know, on vacation, it's like, you know, I mean, you want to practice compassion, but, you know, people are saying, it's okay, we're fine, thanks, you know.

[100:59]

of somebody else. Actually, I heard there's a place called Samsara. Go there. They probably need you. See you later. Yeah, but it's so nice to work up here. Yeah, we know, we know. Well, when you feel better, you'll probably want to go there. We're actually not feeling good enough to go, but I think you are. I think Linda and Edie and Breck. So this thing about not having the impulses to come back, the arhat doesn't have the impulses, but if they get spoken to and they make this vow, then the shape has the shape and the inclination of the vow which allows the impulses to appear. Also, they probably wouldn't have that. They might not completely burn off before they die. They would leave a little bit of karma un-squelched, un-retributed, and that would be enough to bring them back probably.

[102:13]

That's another way to put it. Or even if it got completely clear, the vow would bring them back. power of the vow, the spiritual power of the vow would manifest the Buddha's body as another potential baby Bodhisattva. So the Buddha was like that. The Buddha had gone round and round many times. I think he had, in past lives, not in our life, but had that kind of understanding. He served many Buddhas, went round and round many times, and finally he came, and this time, He's going to really do the Buddha thing. Instead of being a close disciple of a Buddha, he's going to do the Buddha thing. The Buddha for the planet. That's what he was actually so far in this last 3,000 years. He's been the Buddha. And we have this cycle, and it'll be another cycle, and then another Buddha will come, supposedly. It'll be another cycle.

[103:15]

But for this cycle, we have one Buddha. He did it. I think he was very wise. If you look at some of his deeds in past lives, he wasn't amazing. He looked like he had really fantastic understanding. Like Linda's example, right? He got chopped up by this king, and he didn't get angry. There was no self there. He's kind of a... Looks like you've got arhat understanding. To get chopped up like that's pretty... Free of, you know, concern for your body. And I didn't get angry. Looks like an arhat in terms of understanding. Think loving thoughts when somebody's chopping you up. Pretty amazing liberation. That's one of his past stories, right? Giving your body to hungry lionesses. So then he'd be born... Making yourself into a rug for the Buddha to step on the mud puddle. This kind of stuff. This is what he was like before, right? So he'd be born with no karma. He was born with no karma, just born with enough to get born.

[104:17]

You have to have a little to get born. Just enough to get born. A few problems, a few discomforts as a result of that, but not sufficiently to stop from being a Buddha. The Buddha actually was a little bit hung up when he was a kid. And the fact that he was sick at the end of his life, this life, meant there was still a little unresolved karma. So he kept enough, bodhisattvas keep enough so that they can get born. But that little bit, enough to keep born, can also give you some other problems, you know. So, like, he was embarrassed and stuff. Like the Buddha said that one time he looked at some old people, you know, and felt a little disgusted by their, you know, by their decrepit, sickly condition. Hmm. And he said, you know, and he, you know, he said, even, you know, this is like an ordinary common person to feel that way. He said, and here I am, I'm going to be like that pretty soon myself, and I'm repulsed by it. This is really embarrassing, you know, the future Buddha is feeling like that.

[105:18]

He had a little bit of, of course he was noticing it and embarrassed by it, but still he had a little of that then. So there's a little karma there left in his story. And then at the end he got sick. Little karma left there to be burned out. Not much, but a little. So there's a little bit there to get born. And I think he was probably, had our hot understanding in past life. Also he was born many times. So here he is this time with just a tiny bit of karma, a lot of wisdom, and tremendous compassion. So now he can have a Buddha. But he still has to kind of like go through this difficult space and find a way again. But then other ways can join with compassion, so then he comes forth with this fantastic teaching, which was so successful. Got all these people to join and become our hosts. That's a story. Just a story. Edie and Breck and Stuart and Kerry.

[106:19]

So this story tells me, and maybe it's really obvious to everyone, that Samsara is necessary for Buddhahood. Right. Right. I mean, it's an absolutely closed system that we have. Samsara is a closed system? It's absolutely closed because the... Well, it's absolutely closed and it has its own closed circuitry, but there's liberation from it possible. Because exactly the way it is, is exactly why it isn't that way. And everything's that way. The story of the liar. Exactly the reasons for why the person is a liar is exactly the reasons why there's no such thing. Because if there's no reasons for why a system's closed, it's not closed. But if there are reasons, the system depends on those reasons, therefore it's empty. So liberation is possible by the very nature of causation. the Buddha came to point out that people came into samsara by a certain route, namely ignorance, independence, creating a self, karma.

[107:30]

That's how it works. He shows them how it is, they see how it is, they're free. Buddha came to encourage us to look at what's happening and when you see what's happening in samsara, that's nirvana. That's what Buddhas know. They know how samsara works. Therefore they can visit with impunity and joy And actually, Buddhas don't visit, but Buddha's body visits in the form of bodhisattvas. What I was asking, I guess, an implying question is, is it necessary to be in samsara? If you're going to become a Buddha, you have to go through samsara. You have to do it that way. Right, because Buddhas are for samsara. Buddhas aren't for nirvana. Nirvana doesn't need Buddhas. Samsara needs Buddhas. And Buddha needs samsara. And samsara is the lifeblood of Buddha. The world of birth and death is the blood of Buddha. Take away samsara, you don't have a Buddha.

[108:33]

What do you call it? You have a plastic facade or something. You have a... If you take away some real samsara. Samsara is the lifeblood of Buddha. But that doesn't mean... But if you indulge in samsara, that's not Buddha. If you reject samsara, you lose Buddha. You lose Buddha in both ways, but just let samsara be samsara, that's Buddha. They're indistinguishable. They're not the same. They grow on each other. And this is why we are able to achieve liberation. Yes, because we're just like Buddhas before they were Buddhas, before they realized it. They were in samsara, not completely understanding samsara. If we understand samsara, we will be Buddhas. a hard time understanding samsara because samsara is painful and confusing. I mean, it's the most confusing possible setup, right? That's how it keeps going. That's how it keeps creating Buddhas is that it requires lots of study in order to be enough fooled by it.

[109:35]

And it's painful. So it's hard to like settle into something painful. It's how to get your right position and get comfortable in the middle of your pain. It's real. Like this morning, somebody came near me, you know, and I was just standing near this person, and I felt this wrenching, gut-wrenching pain being near this person. You know? And... Really. You know? So I was trying to find out how to, like, how do I take up my place in that position, you know? And part of me thought, well, it's all sort of like, oh, hi, how are you, blah, blah. But I just felt like I was kind of distracting myself from my pain, you know? I'm just... How do I practice loving-kindness and non-attachments in the middle of this gut-wrenching pain of being near this person? It's hard to find your place. But there it is. Try to study that manifestation of samsara when it hits your guts, when it hits your heart, when it hits your mind, your throat.

[110:43]

or your genital area. It's like twisting. Should I do something, make it go away, or should I settle with it? Is dualism what drives that? Yes. The whole cycle? Is it like the heartbeat of samsara? Dualism drives it. It's the heartbeat of samsara, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Dogen Zenji says, Buddhists do not prefer samsara over nirvana, or prefer nirvana over samsara. They don't like nirvana and hate samsara. They also don't like samsara and hate nirvana. They're the nirvana-realizing agents.

[111:48]

and they show us how to relate to samsara in a way that we realize nirvana. That's what Buddha is for. Yes, Greg? I feel like I've got some puzzliness now about pretty fundamental areas, the notion of self. and duality. In listening to the last 10-15 minutes of discussion, I keep thinking that, well, there's samsara and there's nirvana, which are two separate things, but they are? Are they separate? No, they're not separate. They're not separate, but they are. They seem to be, although they're not separate, human beings often feel like they're one or the other. Usually they feel like they're in samsara. Buddha's arhats, bodhisattvas, moving back and forth between those two. If you move back and forth, it seems like they're two separate... Yeah, that's samsara, that point of view.

[112:52]

In nirvana, they're not separate. They're going back and forth in one called life. Life has two things, two aspects, and you can go back and forth between them, but they're not separate. Okay, so in mathematical terms, it's a point rather than a line. It's a single dimension? Yeah, it's a single dimension that you can go back and forth in. Interesting. Yeah. Nirvana and samsara are inseparable. Nirvana is when you don't mess with samsara. Samsara is when you mess with nirvana. Nirvana is when you don't make duality out of samsara. Samsara is when you make duality out of nirvana. Same thing. You can't separate them. And yet the duality feels different than the non-duality. But you're in the same place. Two different perspectives on the same point. And this dot, this point, is real big.

[113:57]

That's the difference. The mathematical point, I guess, has no dimensions, right? This dimension, this is big, real big. You can fit infinite beings in this little world of life. So maybe she didn't call it a point. Maybe she called the universe. All of these entities, the arhats and the buddhas and the bodhisattvas, you speak of as though they are distinct entities. I speak as though arhats and buddhas... How do you substantiate your accusation? What did I do to justify you saying that I said they were distinct entities? Well, what is it? Is it anything other than your own mind? Breck and Breck and non-Breck.

[115:05]

Are you telling me that I'm saying they're distinct things? I'm not drawing that conclusion. Yeah, so you're drawing a conclusion that they're distinct things. I didn't speak of them in a way that indicated that I thought they were distinct things, because I don't. Okay. Let me talk about my conclusion. Okay. My conclusion is, from hearing you talk about that there's an Arhat, and the Arhat is the tip-off by the Buddha that it killed him. People call it bodhisattva as opposed to nirvana. It can become Buddha. Or Buddha. They aren't that interested in being bodhisattvas, necessarily. But when they find out they can be Buddhas, they're really happy about that. And then when they find out they have to go through the bodhisattva training course to be a Buddha, they may be willing to do it. So the Buddha doesn't... When the Buddha tells... The Buddha doesn't say, you guys can be our bodhisattvas. He says, oh, wow! And then, he said, you've got to be a bodhisattva, though. Bodhisattva is not that cool a thing in certain ways from the point of view of an arhat.

[116:11]

It's a lot of work, a lot of pain, and on the verge of no more pain. But to be a Buddha, they like that. Buddha, you know, think, you know, I'm an arhat, you're an arhat, but you're like the best arhat I ever saw. I can be like you? Great. So the Buddha says, yeah, you can be like me. You're still drawing the conclusion that these are separate entities from what you're saying. Yeah, well, go ahead. Keep it that you're drawing the conclusion, not me. I'm not drawing that conclusion, you are. So go ahead, it's a free country. And that dualism which you're concluding is the basis of samsara. You think you're separate from other people, and you think you're separate from Buddha, and you think you're separate from bodhisattvas, and you think bodhisattvas think they're separate from Buddhas, and Buddhas think they're separate from bodhisattvas, or you think Buddhas and bodhisattvas are separate.

[117:11]

That's duality. That drives some self. Because the notion that I... And we need to do that, because without that we don't think we have any Buddhas, so thank you. The notion I've been carrying is that, you know, based on the... duality is an illusion, is that there's as much Buddha in my fingernail as there is in the sun, as there is in every living being. There's no distinction. Complete interdependence is the realization of complete interconnectedness. I'll predict the other conclusion. Really? Well, I hope somebody remembers it. I don't think it's going to crash it. Anyone? Stuart? Yes. There was a question about the karma of the arhat returning to Bodhisattva.

[118:15]

And I just wanted to suggest that taking the Bodhisattva vow We don't necessarily have to think in terms of bad karma, creating retribution, a foul retribution for... It's not karma unless you think of it dualistically. Bodhisattva vow is not karma unless you think of it dualistically. Like I, separate from you, take the bodhisattva vow. Then maybe it's karma. But otherwise, bodhisattva vow doesn't have to be a karma. That's why in some ways it'd be good to first... develop the understanding of arhat and then become a bodhisattva. Because then you can do bodhisattva vows without them being dualistic or creating more kamma. And in fact, the beginning of the bodhisattva path is that you can only really start it after you have the understanding of an arhat. So they have the arhat course, and then the bodhisattva thing starts. So the beginning of the bodhisattva path is the end of the individual liberation path.

[119:16]

That's one kind of strict understanding. we'd have to call ourselves tentative bodhisattvas or bodhisattva aspirants. Your stream enter isn't the first stage bodhisattva. It has to be a stream enter. Or you can say anyway that you can't really do that stuff until you're . Yes? I was just going to say the structure of the bodhisattva vow is I vow to save all beings. Even if we have some non-dualistic understanding of it, there is structurally a dualistic act. Linguistically. Linguistically. And linguistically.

[120:19]

I am the world-honored one. Yes, I wanted to ask you, is it important to know our past lives, the knowledge of our past lives? Is it important? It could come in handy. In what way? Well, like if you're giving a talk, you're doing a workshop or something, you know, And people were getting kind of distracted and, you know, passable and wiggling in their seats and being bored, you know, and thinking, I don't know if this woman really knows much about Buddhism. You could just tell them a few of their past lives, you know, in a way that they could remember them when you tell them. You could start by telling them stuff when they were in high school.

[121:21]

It's kind of showing off. It is kind of showing off, and you Buddhas don't do it unless it's necessary. They do it just to get people's attention, sometimes. Sometimes people do not believe the Buddha, and so the Buddhas sometimes use supernatural powers. Powerful people come up to the Buddha and say, this person's teaching is no good, my teaching is better, this person's crazy. And then they open their hand up like this and the jewel appears and everybody goes, wow, this guy must be right. Poor little Buddha. So then Buddha and kind of like sometimes what the Buddha would do would be to play that game and then do something like the Buddha would take the jewel and make it open into a universe of jewels, or something like that. Or have the ducks in a pond all turn into Buddhas or something.

[122:23]

So Buddha did do stuff like that to get people's attention, because in the time of Buddha, things were kind of spiritually, you know, it was like a spiritual, what do you call it, Super Bowl in those days. So there were very powerful spiritual teachers that could, like, stand up to Buddha and do, and could people, he was with people, and stuff like that. yogis who could still do that. They could know their own and other people's past life. They could fly. They could manifest jewels left and right. So this is the kind of people that he was with. And those people, although they had these powers, they weren't enlightened, so they criticized the enlightened one. So then he had to use powers to kind of... not to defeat them exactly, but to make people not get distracted by them. To say, if their supernatural powers are the reason why you believe in their teaching... well, okay, here's some supernatural powers for you. That's not... But today, since very few spiritual teachers have supernatural powers, it isn't too much. But if a lot of them had them and they were attacking Buddhism, some Buddhists would have to, might have to, do some fancy stuff.

[123:29]

And so you might have to learn that kind of thing. But, you know, it isn't necessarily... Like, it isn't necessary to do... the same way that those people do them. Like, today, things have changed, you know, people are more sophisticated, and today, if somebody did some kind of supernatural demonstration to prove that they were right, it might be that if you told a good joke in response, that people would go for that. Because we have... happening left and right, you know, right? We have, like, people going to the moon... and, you know, blowing up, making bombs, making explosions bigger than any of those people used to do. So we have, people are not impressed by that so much. A good joke is more interesting to people in some ways than flying these days. So, as we progress, the supernatural responses can evolve. So, like, one, you know, about a thousand, one thousand...

[124:32]

About 2,000 years after Buddha, which is 500 years, you have the Zen monks around, right? So then you have the magicians coming to confront the Zen monks. So one magician says, okay, you think you're good? Okay, let's see your supernatural powers. And he goes like this. The magician goes like this. A beautiful rainbow comes out of his hands and arches out of a boat they're on to the next island. And all the people go, wow! And he says to Zen Master, what can you do? And he says, oh, I can make one of those too. So he stands at the edge and pees. And people thought, yeah. So, you know, it's kind of a supernatural thing. So you might have to learn a few of those tricks in order to, in order to, you know, Well, you get, you know, think of your own. Maybe you could like rapidly crochet a beautiful, a beautiful something and you could throw it out over or something.

[125:45]

You know, the point is anyway, It's to calm the people down so they can hear Dharma. And sometimes I hope you have these abilities. And the Buddha picked them up. It seems like it's a distraction to try to think about what my past life. Thinking about them is not usually recommended as the way to realize it. The way you realize it is If you want to see your past lives, what you do is you develop these jhana practices, concentration practices. And after you develop the concentration practices, then you apply yourself to a sequence of events, and then you realize your past lives. So if you feel it's a distraction, fine. You don't have to do it. Nobody's asking you to do it. But anyway, the Buddha did do that. That was part of his training course. But he didn't say you all have to go through exactly the same training that I did. There's a certain part of it that you have to go through.

[126:46]

That's the eightfold path. But you don't necessarily have to do all this jhana stuff he did, although, unfortunately, the way he taught the eightfold path just had the jhanas in it. So we won't talk about that right now. Is that it? Did I get all the questions answered so far? I have one question. It seems that This intermediate state, conscious state that we go into between life and death. Again, when you say that we go into, I don't want to say that we go into this. I want to say that people have reported experiences of this, okay? But to say that we go into it is a little bit too, sounds a little bit, I don't want to say that. We'll actually go through it. There is this experience that some people have, okay? A little bit lighter on this. All right.

[127:47]

Okay. So, she's in this experience that some people have or that we seem to go through. That we're talking about. That we're talking about, yeah. That's the story. Yeah, right. Okay. It's kind of a drama. It is independent of itself and it doesn't have karma. Well, right at death, right at the time of death, what some of the siddhas say, right when you die, right after you die, everybody sees a clear light. In a sense, everybody attains nirvana when they die, or a flash at least. You let go of yourself. The equipment you have to make a self disperse. Your ability to sense a self and cling to it are gone. Your ability to attribute reality to yourself is shot. Since all your self-cleaning and all the suffering from self-cleaning disperse. And you're so-called dead, but you're reconnected also with life.

[128:52]

And it's a kind of nirvana. And everybody experiences it, some Buddhist scriptures say. It's a flash of perfect nirvana. And then the show goes on. And I think there's been discussion about it being really happy during that time. Pleasant, they'd say. Pleasant. But not at that time there. After that. After. During that time. Between life and birth and death. Between birth and death, okay? There's this space. Yes. And some people say it's very fast. Some people say it takes quite a while. I'm just saying at the very beginning of it, There's this big release. Nirvana. Then, that goes away, and you're back into more like some kind of awareness of something happening. And that, some people say, is pleasant. This thing here is more radiant than that, but only lasts for a short time, apparently.

[129:57]

That's the stories that people tell. And after that, there's something which is quite pleasant and easy going. Oh, and one other thing I forgot to tell you, which I'll say later. Remind me about that. Go on. I'll say it later. Okay. And so... But we were talking about how the happier you get, the closer you are to being reborn. Okay. So you're in pretty good shape. Yeah. Pretty good shape. Nobody gets a cold in that space. or gets a headache or, you know, cancer or anything. It's really quite pleasant. And like the story last night, he didn't want to get near this other, you know, baby. They don't really want to be reborn. Yeah, he really, he was like, we're having a good time. So... Your consciousness, if it's negative, if this is the consciousness, this is the satana that we're talking about, if it's a bad one, how can it be brought up?

[131:17]

Partly because you just had a little hit of nirvana. And also, you're sort of in the afterglow of nirvana. And also, you don't have any hard... You don't have any hardware. You have very little hardware. You can't really do much harm. And you kind of let go of yourself. Right? Well, it isn't exactly that you... Yeah, you did sort of let go of yourself because you died. Yeah. You know, you kind of let go. So you're kind of in heaven. You're kind of in heaven. And this space here... This is not a living being, right? In that space, there isn't really hell. There's not hell up there. It's kind of like heaven, actually. But it's not life. It's just a dead... It's a heaven for dead people. When you take birth again, some people take birth and... So birth is... Hell is a characteristic of a living being, not of a dead being, in the Buddhist story.

[132:29]

The space between births is not that bad. However, when you come into birth, you can go right to hell in some cases. So you can go into hell, animal birth. You can also go into some kind of god-like, divine existence. You can go into human. Human is the best because human is the place you can become a Buddha. It's the easiest place to become a Buddha among the various destinies you can take, the various endpoints you can take coming But I forgot to mention, I thought one very important thing, not that it's important, but very interesting, is that most of the people reported that as they were thinking of taking birth, they consulted with someone. They had a conversation. They consulted, usually they said it was some old man or some old woman. They often said, what did they say? A white-robed yogi?

[133:31]

Anyway, an elderly kind of wise counselor, male or female, they consulted with them, had a talk about where it would be good to go, whether it would be good. So they had a little chat. Now, what language they speak is not exactly clear, or whether they're really speaking English, but there's some kind of consultation, like putting your heads together, so to speak. And that's, I thought, I hadn't heard that before. So the birth in this, the people who are... modern-day American religious fanatics who are reporting they rewrote the process of intermediate existence. The story they tell is not so horrendous as what is told in Buddhist scriptures. Buddhist scriptures say it's total sexual obsession, there's greed and... This story that people are telling from their memory anyway is just a more pleasant situation, not so much greed and anger, and, you know, kind of considered with some friendly... Another thing which I thought I might mention for your contemplation is that you may have heard that in Buddhism we say that human birth is extremely rare.

[134:50]

And then also they say in Buddhism By Buddhism I mean a lot of Buddhist scriptures, Buddhist tradition and word of mouth too, is that you're human now and it's very rare that you have this chance, so don't waste it. That seems fine. They also say, unless you're really good this life, your chances of being reborn and human again is very small. So, one way to look at it is, okay, I got to be human now, now I'm kind of in the groove. Some Buddhist scriptures and some Buddhist teachers say, yeah, you're human now and that's fantastic, but if you don't really take advantage of this opportunity, you probably will not be reborn a human. You probably won't get another chance. And is that all these other people waiting in line? It could be that. That's one way of looking at it. It's just that the tendency of your practice is veering off from this good opportunity. That's another way of looking at it. But these people who are reporting this stuff, part of the... Difficulty is that in some texts, it also says, some believe, when you take refuge, this is really, you know, I can imagine you adopt this statement, but anyway, when you take refuge, you're guaranteed of a human birth for at least two more lives.

[136:10]

Not three. Hmm? Not three. What do you mean, not three? Just kind of a specificity really seems off the wall. Anyway, that's three, right? One, two, three. But anyway... But some people say, but that's not that much, so, you know, still bring it, practice hard. And a lot of these people were reporting and looked by their reports that they had successive human lives. Now, part of the reasoning might be that all of their reports led to this human life, led to this human life. It might be that it's hard to remember non-human lives. They might have had non-human lives in between those human lives. You could have a human life and then you remember another human life, but there might have been many lives of some other kind of being that didn't last very long. Traumatic, so you had trouble remembering. And in these hypnotic regression experiments, they usually try to keep the people calm and don't let them get too upset. So it might be that if they start descending, part of the technique might be that as they start descending into maybe some memory of some terrible rebirth,

[137:23]

that the hypnotist kind of like pulls him out of it, because they don't want him to freak and then have this terrified subject here. So there's something about that, too, that hellish recollections might be discouraged by the hypnotist who wants to keep the person relaxed. So it may be hard to, with this technique, of keeping the people fairly calm to stop them from remembering hell. So it's also possible that maybe there were hells between these rebirths, that these people reported a success of human births. There might have been hells between . On the other hand, the Buddhist scriptures say you don't get one hell between human births. You usually get a lot of hells between human births. So it's not clear, but it looks like that some of the Buddhist descriptions are really extremely negative. about our possibilities unless we're extremely good. But the reports of these people who are reviewing their lives, it sounds like their reports aren't so negative.

[138:28]

It doesn't sound quite as horrendous. Although still, not going the other direction, but just not so extreme as some of the Buddhist The British are so threatening. As bad as some of the Christian stories and some of the Bible stories about what can happen. And I guess probably Islam's got some stuff too. Some horrifying stories and other people. So that's some other information for you. To broaden and color the picture a little bit more in a more varied way. You mentioned before about dreams, about having dreams and using them. Yes. Where you were about to say a little bit more on that. I dream a great deal. I think that dreams can reveal information to you about areas of yourself that you don't pay attention to.

[139:36]

huge field of information, and we have tendencies to look in certain areas, and that's fine. These other areas we don't look at are potentially enlightening, and also if we don't look in these areas, a lot of stuff comes in here that's undermining, but since we don't look over here, we don't even see them come. And sometimes the only way we can turn our attention in this direction is through dreams or some certain kinds of catastrophes. or something really bad happens, and then we say... But for a man to realize that he has lots of feminine qualities, and for a woman to realize that she has masculine qualities, the dream might be able to tell you that.

[140:51]

The dream might be telling you, give more attention to your husband or to your wife. Yes? I've had this impulse all during the retreat, and I actually don't know what it is, but the impulse is to, I want to understand in terms of karma. And I know it came up about the Oklahoma City bombing as well. It's the same, I feel like it's the same question, but... And I know I've asked you this, thought this before, it's an ongoing... of endeavor to understand, somehow to understand in the context of what we've been talking, how we've been talking, what that was and still is. Well, I have kind of a response for that, which is what he

[141:59]

maybe too short even to bring up, but it relates to what we were just talking about in terms of your dreams. And that is, one story about what happened there is that you have the occurrence of one particular person, but I think a lot of people, who were doing karma, and were not paying attention to what they were doing. This is the Yoyo situation. And among those people who don't pay attention, who don't look at their karma, and don't look at what they're doing, in the place they don't look, that's where there's strength to create. And this person named Hitler, among others, had the ability by the very fact that he knew how not to look at his darkness.

[143:11]

He had the ability to talk to other people's darkness and get them to come from those places. Hitler seemed to have this exceptional ability, exceptional, not exceptional darkness, but exceptional ignorance of his darkness, a polar of having everything ugly and negative in his own mind, outside himself. You know, Nazi Germany was... One story of Nazi Germany was it was an organization dedicated to beauty through violence. But that was their thing. Hitler's thing was to create a beautiful country and to use violence to create it if necessary. Everything that he didn't want to look at not being there. So all the great art that was just really thriving in Germany was art about people bringing the dark stuff out in front, and showing it, and seeing it, and admitting to their darkness, and were watching where it comes from.

[144:22]

All that great art, which was flourishing right before the Nazis came in, the high point of German art, anyway, in the 20th century, all that was considered sick art, and they got rid of it. And the thriving art was just nothing but positive. The Nazi art was nothing but happy scenes, healthy people, and German soldiers killing the dark people. And Hitler had the ability to go into a group of people and find the area of their darkness. And in descriptions of Hitler, what do you call it? I've heard descriptions of the way he appeared when he talked. I've seen some of it on tape, but when he started his talk, he would often be pale and nervous and weak and lost. And his supporters often felt nervous at the beginning of his talks because... But he kind of had some intuitive ability.

[145:24]

He would just sort of fumble around in the group until he found the place, the dark place in people. And when he could feel their emotion come in. And then he would just pull that out. So like he was talking to college professors, he wouldn't do it with intellect or thinking. Because that's where they're strong. That's where they guard. They have some morality there. He would go for their feelings. And he'd hit it. And he'd just draw that out and just take them over. If he was talking to feeling types, people who knew about their feelings, thinking. He would talk to them about intellectual things. And he didn't know much about these areas, but he would, in their darkness, you don't have to be skillful, but he could feel that and then he'd bring off, so he'd bring out emotion in the group. And it was all based on darkness. And it was a time I think when German people probably really wore and they had a lot of darkness, a lot of things they didn't want to look at. They were sitting ducks for this kind of dark politics.

[146:28]

somebody who would all have shadow, but somebody who's really turning away from her shadow or his shadow and has a sense of how to take that very sense of turning away. He had this gift. And he found a way to grab all these different types of Germans offered him. And he talked to different groups in different ways. And always, not always, but often, a very high percentage, he would hit the right dimension and pull out the darkness for the darkness in that person and let it come out. So I think in some ways the explanation is that things like that were a key factor, that it was a release of tremendous ignorance. It was capitalization and development and enhancement and promotion of tremendous ignorance by some people who were like exceptionally dark and ignorant. And so they could use all the different people, all the different groups, find their weakness and capitalize on their weakness and get people to do things which they would never do.

[147:40]

But you get that part and get going. That's one story I would say about how it happened. And I think it's one of the stories you could tell about how that happened. was released and people were carried away by it. That is not necessarily... You can talk about past karma to some extent, but actually that was like present karma. But my explanation is about more how it got set up that he could... They started about that too, but it seems like that's one key factor, how the Germans fell for him. All these people who died, but the nine religions that died, one woman of which the only agent can, those innocents, so there was environmental, they were born in Germany,

[148:58]

Well, whatever sizable, reasonably sizable small group there would have been, whatever it was, that group would have got it. Sizable what? Whatever group, whatever minority of a reasonable size, such you could say, they're the problem. You know, he had to... What he wasn't looking at in himself, he had to get outside to attack. He had to be pushing something down, right? So he had to, like, attack that because he was attacking it in himself. So to get the German people Some group, but if it was too small, you know, you couldn't really say that a few gypsies were the cause of all Germans' problems.

[150:08]

But a minority of 5% or whatever it was is big enough so you could say they're the problem. If it had been some other group, an identifiable minority, sufficiently big and sufficiently powerful to blame it on them, then that group would have got it. just like Rajneesh people, you know. They pick the people in the town nearby. When you have a perfect place, a perfect beautiful place, that means you're overlooking the shadow. You have to find some way to attack the shadow outside if it's a group. So you have to find this thing outside to unify the group in a perfect vision of beauty. So whatever group it was. So the Jews were that group. So their situation of being that minority in a situation of darkness and evil It isn't necessarily your karma that you wind up to be in a minority. That's not necessarily karma. It doesn't mean it's your fault to be a minority. It just means you're in a situation where you are the minority.

[151:12]

It's not like your karma to be a black person and to be a minority. If black people are a majority, they're not going to be attacked by the white people. So that's one way to say it's a characteristic of the mind of evil that would look for the minority, and if you're in the minority, you're the one who's going to get it. What point are you going to choose me by? Just kind of... Is that true? Is that true vision? Or you're saying it's not karma that you happen to be a victim of this? Karma is... Look at the right... Not... Hmm? Fruit. So, yeah, so, here I am, somebody's going to kill me now. This has something to do with my karma, yes. But, I also said, being harassed and attacked is actually maybe a sign that consciousness is good.

[152:21]

Joseph Smith was martyred, not because there's something wrong with him in a way, but because he had... and people really got angry at him. So you could say the Jews were martyred if you want to, because that's another story you can tell. It doesn't mean we should say, well, thanks for martyring them, because that's a bit much to get the whole country to do it. But in fact, you could see them as martyrs. But they would be martyrs depending on their spiritual conviction when they died. If they weren't standing up for love and kindness at the time of dying, then that's where they'd be. Then they wouldn't be martyrs. But if they were doing a good job at the time that they were dying, then this result was bringing their practice to completion. So it depends on, in terms of Buddhism, it depends on how they meet this harassment.

[153:27]

We're all harassed in various degrees, some to the point of death, But how do we meet that? That will determine in what way this difficulty is manifesting in relationship to our practice and going to be resolving our karma, or when we're going to fight it and just be another difficulty which we try to use karma against. So the way each person died would determine whether this is karma maturing in such a way that it's manifesting. ...of the scripture, or whether karma is manifesting in such a way that it's another difficulty which they're going to fight. You know, in this case, mostly unsuccessfully, in terms of protecting themselves. But, to not even fight it, but to use this as an opportunity to realize, in my case, my fate, which is the love of my enemy.

[154:29]

What happened when Gandhi was killed? What did he do? Did he love his enemy that shot him? Only Gandhi. Some of the Jews, I'm sure, loved their enemy, practiced their faith as they were dying. And then that karma was not negative karma, exactly, but it was a maturing of karma which would be worse later. Worse later. So I think what could be worse? Well, what could be worse than that is that a hundred times, or a thousand times, rather than just for, you know, thirty seconds, or two hours, or whatever it was, or one week, or six years. So, I think all of the key factors, what is your response to the difficulties of samsara? If it's appreciated, then what this is, is your karma, which will be worse later, maturing now, if your response is to fight it, it's just another difficulty which you're fighting. So each of those people in that minority, depending on how they practice with that horrendous, incredibly horrendous thing, would be, would determine the chronic nature of each one of those cases.

[155:42]

And to think, you know, I was thinking the other day, how, how could a human being go into a gas chamber and take one of those little babies and move them out of there to the, I mean, how could a German person do that? pick up a baby Jewish kid and take it out. How could you do that? You must be totally, you know, totally possessed by your darkness. So the Germans were totally possessed. Their darkness was totally let out all over the place. The whole country was overwhelmed by evil. in the sense that they were doing things they didn't know. And the Jews were the minority they needed. And each Jew was responsible for their own karma. And you'd have to do each one at a time to tell. Bad karma or was that good karma? Was there more karma created at that time or not?

[156:45]

And the numbers are so staggering that it's hard to look at the individuals. But each German was one German that didn't pay attention to their darkness and was captured. And each of them was faced with horror, whether they could practice it or not. There was just horror everywhere, you know. And it was horror all over China, horror all over the Pacific, just horror all over the planet, you know. That's what's going on in this century, you know, 1939 to 19, or 1938 or whatever, to 1945. This whole planet was just, you know, and actually the war really was going on from a little while after, it was 1914 to 1945. Solid war. A little break, kind of, a little lightening up after the First World War. But basically the country was in war all those years.

[157:47]

The world was in war all those years. It's still going on. Now that's coming up again now, actually. There was a break. There was a big break from the end of the Second World War until about 19... It was a break. And before 1914, it was really different. All through the 19th century, it was really different. There were wars, but they weren't all over the planet. And then the planet comes in this time from 1914 to 1945, where it's basically total planetary war. for a while, for about 25 years, from about 1945 to about 1975. Kind of break. And now it's not total war again, but it's total crisis. The planet's now in crisis again. But it's not total war, but it's crisis. We had this little break there. And that break we grew up in. We grew up in a country that had the least war of any country.

[158:48]

And also during the Second World War, we were the only place on the planet, really, us and Canada maybe, that weren't touched. So we have this unusual situation here, but we were the place that was the exception to the rule. And then during that golden era, when there wasn't much war, during the Cold War, Again, we were the center, and we prospered during that era incredibly. And now we're moving, and then since about 1970, we're in a new era where the crises are now starting to come to us. So that's one view of the story. And Nazi Germany was like the worst, but not the only place where this incredible darkness happened. The Japanese also went nuts. Chinese, responded to it pretty well, in a way, but then the communists went nuts too after a while, right? But the cultural revolution was crazy.

[159:51]

So, anyway, the only thing I can see, the only hope for the world I can see is people start paying attention to... for me to start paying attention to my karma and courage, by my example, to encourage other people to do it. That's the only way I can see, because otherwise darkness... We have potential for destruction. We are animals that have destructive abilities. When we're frightened, we can do violent things to protect ourselves. We can be violent. We have a violent past, And unless we keep track of our darkness and watch what we're doing, violence can either come through us or we can allow other people to do it. So we have to be very vigilant of what we're doing and what's happening. And the Buddha's been asking people to do that. Buddha's been asking people to do that for a long time as a way of world peace.

[160:55]

Where can you live with other people? Enter samsara to bring this teaching to practice to people. Yes. To support what you're saying, in recent years, the research on the Holocaust has shifted focus from the well-known famous perpetrator. I think that a lot of us have the image that the Holocaust was perpetrated by a band of demons with blood. That kind of thing, just horribly inconceivable creatures. But a lot of the focus of the research lately has been just on how did this happen in Germany?

[161:57]

It's focused on the German people in Germany. the recognition that the Holocaust and all of the attendant wars were perpetrated by ordinary people, by regular people, by people like us and people like the people we know who carried on fairly ordinary lives and had wives and children and... made sure that everything went according to schedule and showed up on time for work and went to concerts and cultural activities and played tennis and maintained the ordinary trappings of an ordinary person's life. To support what you're saying, it's very clear that we have to pay close attention. And there's other people who, like, you know, don't live ordinary lives, who spend their whole night off the street being cruel to whoever they can be cruel to. And a lot of them were the leaders.

[162:57]

People like that were some of the leaders of the group. But a lot of other people were not like that. And they were used. They volunteered. They volunteered. They willingly participated because they weren't crazy. and also look kind of normal. So I don't know if you can eat lunch now, but we could have lunch, you know, maybe we could have lunch out here in these decks or something, in these tables, if you like. Thank you very much for being so alert during this grueling workshop. Thank you very much. My wife was worried about you. She thought I was working you too hard. She said, you're going to meet again tonight? How can they stand it?

[163:50]

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