basically a type of meditation, a type of training of mental attention which comes to fruit as tranquility, as serenity, as concentration, as a and a relaxed body and mind that's alert and at ease and can easily being employed to do any wholesome activities. So tranquility or mental stabilization is a very important to realize in order to study the profound teachings which lead us to wisdom. Without considerable tranquility it's hard for us to learn the teachings about how to train our attention in such a way as to develop wisdom. So the basic, one basic instruction for tranquility meditation, which I like, is just that if you're sitting or standing or walking or reclining, whatever comes up, whatever experience arises, whatever comes to your mind, that you meet that.

[01:23]

You meet it with full mindfulness, fully present with it, and relaxed with it. This is a basic instruction. Train yourself to meet things that way moment after moment. That will come to fruit as a tranquil state of body and mind. Once you're calm, you can move on to other types of meditation. The way to describe this is instead of saying meet everything with complete relaxation would be to say meet everything without getting involved in any discursive thinking about it. So giving up discursive thinking is another way to say relax.

[02:25]

So if somebody says to you, good morning, you listen to that and you relax. If someone says, good morning, stupid, you listen to it and you relax. You don't think, well, why did they say that? Or, you know, you think I'm stupid, well, how about you? You know, and you have no right to talk to me that way, even if you don't say that to the person, to think that way, to get into that kind of unrelaxed response. Now, if you could actually say those things and be relaxed, that would be okay, but for beginners, we recommend just listen to the sound of people's voice, listen to the sound of the piano, listen to the sound of the bird, listen to your own thinking. your own evaluations, your own feelings, whatever comes up be aware and basically let it go.

[03:27]

So a Zen teacher was once visited by a monk And the monk had a question for the teacher. But he didn't get to talk to the teacher directly. He talked to the teacher's attendant. The teacher's attendant came to the teacher and said, there's and he wants to know how to practice. And the teacher says, tell him to have a cup of tea and go. So the attendant went and told the monk that, and he came back, he said, I told him to have a cup of tea and go. Teacher, what is the way of practicing Zen meditation, or the Buddha way? And the teacher says, have a cup of tea and go. So this is a kind of a basic instruction. It's not really then, exactly, any Buddhist or any teacher could give it, and any teacher could give us that same instruction.

[04:42]

basically an instruction in developing tranquility. And in order to be able to ask questions like, how do you meditate or how do you practice the Buddha way, and to be able to hear the instruction, you have to be living kind of a moral life, an ethical life. You have to be like not eating too much or too little, not drinking too much or too little, not intoxicating yourself with too much food or too much drugs, not intoxicating yourself with thinking that your health is going to last forever or your youth is going to last forever or your life is going to last forever. So by meditating in certain ways you can practice tranquility. So these practices are kind of assumed as we turn to these teachings that I'm offering and studying with you during this class, these teachings on ending outflows.

[06:02]

when you're doing the sitting and walking meditation and also when you're sitting in class, you can be practicing tranquility if you wish during the week at various points. It's good to keep exercising your tranquility training on an ongoing basis unless you just happen to have practiced it already and you're just generally in a tranquil state and you don't even have to do anything then you're kind of like very fortunate and you don't have to do any exercises but most people even people who have already attained calm have to sort of re-exercise themselves warm up again uh... because the calm doesn't last it's not a permanent state Some people, after practicing tranquility meditation for many years, they don't have to do much to return to it. They just naturally train their attention in such a simple way.

[07:13]

They naturally spend quite a bit of time not being discursive with their experience. They kind of naturally slip back into the tranquility training and then the tranquil state. Any questions about this introductory comments on tranquility? No? Yes? What painful emotions do you have in mind? Greed. while you're experiencing greed?

[08:28]

I think you could be tranquil while you're experiencing greed, but if you were training yourself to achieve tranquility, at the moment you felt greed, it would be hard for you to, for example, give up discursive thought. So, like, when you're in the training mode and something appears, and you meet it with relaxation, that wouldn't be compatible with greed with respect to the thing. That make sense? No? If something, if someone shows you something and you kind of like, they don't give it to you, they show it to you, they could show you a beautiful, a beautiful bell, you know, an antique bell, exquisitely made, You look at it, but you don't relax with it. You try to get it, even though I'm not giving it to you. You want to get it, even though I haven't offered it to you.

[09:31]

You feel greed for it. You crave to possess it. Can you imagine that? So can you see that that's not a very relaxed way to respond to this lovely bell? Pardon? No what? It's not relaxed. It's not relaxed, no. So if you're training yourself to relax and you feel green about some object, or if you had something, say, I gave you the bell, okay, can I have it back? If you're practicing relaxation, you'd probably say, what is it here? You know, you wouldn't be attached to it. if you actually were successfully practicing relaxing with your possession of the bell. Does that make sense? I'm saying that the greed to get something that's not being given to you or to hold on to something that someone's asking you to give to them, the greed and attachment are not compatible with training yourself for tranquility.

[10:38]

That's not compatible. You have to like find a situation where at least for a little while you weren't really that interested in trying to get anything, even tranquility. But if you're already tranquil and something appeared to you very attractive, it might be that you would have an impulse to try to get it or wish that you had it. But you'd be in a tranquil state when that arose. So it would be quite different. It would be kind of like when my daughter was born. When babies are born, they give them a little pop on the butt. So she came out. She looked perfectly calm. And somebody said, well, shouldn't we give her a little spank? And the doctor said, she's perfectly alert and relaxed. You don't have to hit her. But if you want to, go ahead. So they went and gave her a little swat. She went, huh. Okay, yeah. If you're really relaxed and even a greed or anger would arise, it wouldn't disturb you much because you're so calm.

[11:50]

Now, another thing that happens when you're calm, that very easily can happen when you're calm, so you could have, for example, a severe illness, a very painful illness like cancer or something, or a diabetes or liver failure or something and you're having dialysis something very painful a situation like that and you could in the pain you could train yourself in such a way as to get calm and if you were calm when the pain arose you could just like meet it and continue to be calm and relaxed with it so for example the Buddha had physical pain. He was, you know, he had back problems and towards the end of his life he had a severe illness which involved major, you know, major physical challenge and pain. But he was, continued to be this totally relaxed, a beneficent, wise and compassionate being.

[12:57]

So if you're already calm, some emotion, afflictive emotion like greed would arise, it wouldn't have as much power as usual. But if a pain, like a painful feeling arose, it would still be painful, but you'd be relaxed with it. And maybe you know that sometimes you can have pain and be relaxed with it. And you can also have a really strong pleasure and be relaxed with it. And you can have mild pain and mild pleasure too when you're calm. And it's just kind of like not a big deal. Does that make sense? To train your attention on just looking at this person and not being discursive about him, that doesn't go very well with trying to get something from this person. Because that's more like getting into the discursive thought again and tensing up. So it's not very good to try to practice a situation where you're surrounded by things which you strongly desire.

[14:04]

it's good to go someplace where the situation is fairly simple. Like you're in a room, you know, facing a wall or something, so you don't see how all the other people in the room, the lovely and unattractive people, you're just looking at the wall. Most people, you know, do not like to say, I wish I could take this wall home with me, or, you know, I hope they don't change my seat because this is really a nice section of the wall. You know, it's mostly people are like, you know, It would be nice to get through this period without too much difficulty, but, you know, that's how it gets usually. Does that make sense? I still get what you do when greed is there and you're not calm. Well, if you can't relax with the greed, there are some kind of heavy-duty antidotes to it, which don't... so well with the like relaxation and so on but one of the heavy antidotes to greed is well one is to imagine I used to imagine myself when I felt greed when I was sitting meditation at the San Francisco I used to imagine myself knocked down on the street in front of Zen Center and trucks running over me and having my guts all over the street

[15:28]

I used to think of that, and that would snap me out of the green. I also sometimes remember what Suzuki Roshi looked like just as he died. I remember what he looked like. I just think of my teacher's face right after he died, and I would snap out of the green. It's kind of like, get serious. get serious, you know, you've got better things to do than be thinking about a little trivial things. Usually the things we feel greed about are not, we're not like, I'm not talking about greed for air, you know, like you have asthma and you're trying to get more air. I'm not talking about that kind of thing. It's very difficult to practice relaxation when you have asthma attack. But usually what people are greedy about when they're meditating is really ridiculous you know they're just they're just driving themselves nuts basically you know they're not having a good time usually now if you're in pain and you have the greed to get away from your pain and sometimes you can use and sometimes people do that but basically for greed it's like we're not being very serious usually for most of the stuff we're trying to get

[16:48]

And so being serious or just thinking of something really repulsive snaps you out of it. Now, if you're angry, if you have severe anger and ill will towards somebody or towards yourself, then it's recommended to practice loving-kindness meditation. Just think over and over again, try to find somebody that you feel that you want, that you have loving feelings towards, somebody who you would like to be happy be happy even and maybe you don't want certain people who have been really cruel to you to be happy and you're really thinking about how you'd like them to be you know not well and so when you're thinking that that's also hard to relax when you're thinking that you'd like somebody to be not well so then what somebody who I like I would like to be well It's nice to start with yourself, but some people can't even start with themselves. So there's somebody you'd like to be happy.

[17:49]

So find somebody. If you can't find anybody, come and see me. I'll try to help you. Find somebody you'd like to be happy. So you start with somebody. I would like this person to be happy, to be free of suffering, to be buoyant and ease and not afraid. And you start with that and you just expand it until finally you don't feel ill will anymore. then you can like relax and if you're just totally confused in a bewildered it's usually good to try to find some way to find something you can focus on maybe you can't focus on your breath maybe you should just type a sutra or something or chant, sometimes chanting things over and over helps you focus so if you're really those are the grosser forms of getting to be less discursive Those are ways to be less discursive, less running around in your head. Okay?

[18:50]

And those are warm-ups to tranquility practice. So that's part of the practice. I wasn't thinking of emphasizing that during this course. Emphasizing these wisdom teachings. Okay? Any other questions about that? usually when I come and sit here at the yoga room at the beginning of the sitting I'm a little bit more less at ease with the street sounds and with the piano music and dance class at the beginning I'm a little bit more I'm less relaxed at the beginning than at the end but usually by the end of the half an hour I almost, sometimes I, many times I don't know if the music stopped or not. It's almost like it stopped. I can't hear it anymore.

[19:52]

And like now you can see it's still going on, but sometimes I think it does stop, but it's, at first it's like quite, you know, jangling. And then by the end of the period, it's kind of the same music, but it's not jangling. I'm not jangled. Anybody have that experience sitting here? So just by sitting still, if you'd like, just try to sit still and try to have your body relax. It's a calming exercise. Another thing about what Zen practice is, or Zen meditation, Zen meditation in a sense is meditation which is only found in the Zen school. Because if it's found in other schools, then it's just a general Buddhist practice.

[20:55]

And a lot of practices in Zen are just like tranquility. But there are some practices in Zen you don't find in any other school, so in some sense those are the prototypic Zen practices. However, still those Zen practices, for me, find out or tie them back to actually the original Buddha. So the original Buddha taught this teaching about how to attain supreme enlightenment, and that's what the Zen school is interested in too, but they have different ways of putting it, but I like to clarify the two. to show how we're really doing the same practices as the founder of the tradition. And so the teaching of this series has that quality in the sense... I don't know if it has that quality.

[21:59]

It has the quality that I heard once a story about a Zen monk who is one of the main people in the lineage that comes down to the San Francisco Zen Center. And this person, this Chinese person named Dongshan, and he was visiting a Zen master who was not his, who did not become his main teacher, but was one of the teachers he visited. And this Zen teacher's name was Guishan, and he asked Guishan some questions, and he didn't what Guishan taught him. If you want to, someday I'll tell you the whole story, but basically this monk who was going to become one of the great masters in the Chinese Zen tradition, he went to see another great master and the teacher gave him a teaching and he didn't understand. He said, basically, can you recommend some other teacher because I'm not getting your teaching, could you

[23:07]

Actually, what he said was, he said, the teacher said, do you understand? He said, no. And then he said, well, would you tell me more? And the teacher said, born of my father and mother will not tell you anymore. The teacher refused to give him any more instruction. He gave him instruction, he didn't get it, and he wouldn't say it again. This happens a number of times in Zen tradition, that the teacher giving a teaching, the student doesn't get it, and the student asks for further instruction, and the teacher says, but often they will recommend another teacher. And I didn't mean to get into this, but I would just suggest to you that sometimes what a teacher does is when a student comes, they give a teaching and then when the student doesn't understand, they can see that there's not the karmic affinity so that they can be the person's teacher. But they maybe see this as an excellent student, but we just don't have the

[24:12]

you know, karmic or cosmic setup so that I can be your teacher. But I know somebody else. I have a feeling that this person would be your teacher. So they say, no, they won't teach anymore. They won't try again. Sometimes they do try again, but in this case they didn't. So then the monk says, well, can you recommend somebody else? And he says, actually, there is somebody else that I would recommend that I think might And the monk said, Dung Shan, the monk said to the master, Guishan, well, can you tell me something about this person? And Guishan said, yeah. He was with me one time, and he asked me if I had any instructions for him. And I said to him, end all outflows. End all leakage. That's what he said. and I remember when I read that and I don't remember what stage I was at when I thought well what does that mean end all outflows and that's what I'd like to look at with you in this class is what that teacher was telling this monk when he said end all outflows but he wasn't telling Dungsan he was telling Dungsan that he said this to the person and then Dungsan traveled to see this other teacher

[25:43]

And they, excuse the expression, hit it off. And they did kind of, and Dung Shan kind of asked him the same question that he asked Gui Shan. He asked his new teacher, Yun Yan. He asked him and got kind of the same answer, partly because he told, he went to the second teacher and he told the second teacher what happened with the first teacher. and then asked him the same question and the first teacher did basically the same thing the second teacher no the second teacher did basically the same thing the first teacher did but the karmic affinity was there and he woke up and that's another thing that often happens monk asks question A to the teacher teacher responds they don't get it they go tell another teacher what happened the other teacher does basically the same thing and they get it because you know you know, like it's a different valley, you know, or taller, it's a different season, whatever, you know, the person's got a different accent.

[26:46]

But that often happens in the Zen stories, that one teacher can complete the teaching that the other teacher starts. and then again I don't remember at what point in my studies when I ran across that teaching I can't remember if I'd already heard about outflows in other contexts of Buddhist teaching I can't remember if I heard about them before but whether I did or not anyway I have studied and thought about and talked with people about since the time I heard that Zen story I have been continuing to try to understand how how to end outflows And what are the akhlos that were encouraged to end? Well, they are fundamental defilements that maintain bondage to birth and death.

[27:48]

And what are defilements? Defilements are like, well, the Buddhist word, one of the basic Buddhist words for defilement is well, outflows. And another basic word for defilement is actually literally would be stain. So the word The Sanskrit word for outflows is A, S with a little slash over it, R-A-V-A, asarava. That's a Sanskrit word which can be translated as outflow or as leakage or as flood or as taint or as canker or as defilement. Did you get that? What's the word?

[28:53]

Say it. Ashtrava. Ashtrava. And in Pali, it's pronounced asava. Asava. They don't have the sh sound in Pali. It means the same thing. And the root of the word is sa. The shra in the Sanskrit, shra in the Pali, sa, which means to flow. in front is a debatable, is etymologized or philologically explained in different ways. Some people say that A means flowing out. Some people think that A means flowing in. So some people mean it means it inflows. Some other people think it outflows. But it basically means flowing that occurs that kind of pushes you around and keeps you hooked in. to a certain way of being or it's like you know it's like if you exercise a lot you get lactic acid buildup right and it's hard to move your legs after a while you move your muscles because you have all this lactic acid in in a sense lactic acid is kind of like defiling your muscles in a sense there's probably some good reason for it but

[30:15]

vis-a-vis free motion because of lactic acid, right? So these outflows are things that accumulate in your body. It's a way your body and mind become, so you kind of get stuck. And then these outflows not only keep you hooked in, then they are kind of like the seeds for affliction. And affliction, physical affliction and mental affliction. And when the Buddha was enlightened, I think I maybe said this in the course description, he attained on the night of his enlightenment a number of kinds of knowledge. And the first several types were kind of the knowledge that was attained by yogis. It's a kind of like super normal kinds of knowledge. What's called divine eye, divine ear knowledge of other people's mind recollections of past lives and magical powers he realized these kinds of knowledge in conjunction with his concentration practice and then those do not produce liberation and the final knowledge which he achieved for the first time that night was the knowledge of the end of outflows knowledge of the end of outflows

[31:43]

is the knowledge which liberates the yogi another word for defilement is klesha sanskrit word klesha and that word is etymologized as stain so these asaravas of these if i can use different words for it through the course One of the scriptures I'm going to give you is called All Taints. Shabba, Shabba, Shabba, Shabba Asrava, Shabba Asrava, Shabba Asrava. Shabba means all, Asrava, all the taints is a translation. All the outflows, all the defilements. all the all the tankers all the all the sores you know inflow outflow leakage um in this uh in the one of the main collections of buddhist scriptures the middle length sayings the second uh sutra the second scripture in this collection is this one i'm referring to called all

[33:10]

paints, or saba-asrava, saba-asava. So I'll pass that out to you tonight. And this is a little long. In the last course, we actually read a scripture This one's a little bit too long. Not too long, but I'm not thinking of reciting this in class yet. But I'll pass it out to you. You can start reading it. Maybe we'll look at it tonight. And then you can read it between now and next week. And I think it would be good to bring it back to class. And people do have difficulties remembering to bring their scriptures to class. which I understand because once you get out of here you know there's lots of different kinds of piano music going on and bird calls and stuff like that and horn honks so it's hard to remember your scripture but if you bring it it's kind of good because I was thinking of looking at this this text actually that I'm coming out to you now is in this text Buddha gives seven different methods

[34:31]

for restraining or abandoning these outflows. And after he gives you seven different methods for restraining or abandoning the outflows, he basically says that when the bhikkhus, when the monks practice these methods of restraint and abandonment, They realized the end of suffering. So these seven methods are like kind of a big deal to look at in seven weeks. Do we have seven or eight weeks? Seven? Yeah, so we could do one a week more or less. Learn these methods of ending off blows and ending suffering. Oh, and I wanted to tell you that at least I found an outblow.

[35:42]

No, I found a misprint. On the second page at the last paragraph, it says, you know, what taints, what outblows Bhikshus by restraining? Here, a Bhikshu reflecting wisely abides with the I faculty restrained. while taints, vexations, and fever might arise in one who abides with high faculty restrained. See that? It should be unrestrained. Did you not get one? Do you want one? Are there extra ones? Yeah, one person up in the front here didn't get one. Anybody else didn't get one? You can have this one.

[36:47]

It already has the uninserted. So let me know if you see any other things that might be misprints, please bring them to my attention. Thank you. when copying these things over because there's repetition to make mistakes. Okay, so we could actually start, we could read this. Are you ready for this? You look worried, doll. Are you okay? Okay. Okay, so, thus I have heard. So this is, thus I have heard. This is Ananda speaking. The speaker here, I have heard, you know, the Buddha's attendant is reciting this text that he heard Buddha give. On one occasion, the Blessed One was living at Savati in the Jeta Grove of Anatta Pindika's park.

[37:54]

He addressed the bhikkhus. Bhikkhus are, is the male... male monk. A bhikshuni is a female monk. I would recommend to you, if you're uncomfortable saying Sanskrit, you can just change it to monk and you can understand that to be male or female. You could also say yogi or yogini. This is a Buddhist monk, but the word bhikshu just means a monk or a yogi under the Buddha's instruction. So there, there, there, Bhikshus thus, he said, Bhikshus, he addressed the monks thus, monks, and the monks say, venerable sir, in response, monks, like that, right. You know what venerable means?

[38:58]

It's related to the word Venus. Lovable teacher? Yes, venerable teacher. The Blessed One said, Monks, bhikshus, I shall teach you a discourse on the restraint of all taints, on the restraint of all outflows. Listen and attend closely to what I shall say. Yes, venerable sir, the big shoes replied. The blessed one said this, big shoes say that the destruction of the taints is for one who knows and sees, not for one who does not know and see. Who knows and sees what? Wise attention and unwise attention. One who attends unwisely, when one attends unwisely, unarisen taints arise and arisen taints increase.

[40:10]

When one attains wisely, unarisen taints do not arise and arisen taints are abandoned. So in the last class, we studied the 37 practices, 37 wings of enlightenment. and we studied in quite a bit of the first four of the first four thirty seven are the four foundations of mindfulness which we studied the next four are the four right efforts and the four right efforts are the first right effort is to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states to prevent the arising of unarisen outflows effort is to abandon any unwholesome states or any outflows that have arisen the third right effort is to give rise to any unarisen wholesome states to give rise to an unarisen state that doesn't have outflows and

[41:26]

and then to continue to maintain an arisen wholesome state, or to continue to maintain a state where there's no outflows. Those are the four right efforts. If you attend to what's happening unwisely, then these taints, these outflows will arise. And if they've already arisen, and then you attend, the outflow's already arisen, and then you attend to what's happened, then the outflow will increase. The leakage, the affliction will increase. If you attend wisely, and if, for example, if an unwholesome state has arisen, or an outflow has arisen, I suppose they're the most basic unwholesomeness, the most basic source of affliction. And there's grosser forms, too.

[42:29]

But you could practice, if a gross form of affliction or a gross unwholesomeness arose, and you attend to that gross unwholesomeness wisely, it will be abandoned. If a subtle or a fundamental affliction, fundamental defilement like these outflows arise and you wisely attend to them, they're released, they're abandoned. If they haven't arisen and you wisely attend to them, they won't arise if you wisely attend to them. I mean, if you wisely attend to what's happening, and outflows aren't there, they won't arise. If they are there, they'll drop away. We have this Zen saying which goes, flowers fall in the midst of weeds grow and we don't like them.

[43:43]

So the flower, you could say, is our happiness, our freedom, our enlightenment. The flower of awakening. If you attach to it, it falls. Even enlightenment, even some excellent state, if you tense up around it and attend to it unwisely, you'll lose it. On the other hand, if an unwholesome state arises and you attend to that unwisely, like don't like it. But then I add to that by saying if you do not attach to flowers, if you attend to flowers wisely, then they blossom even more. If you attend to affliction or weeds wisely, they wilt. So, flowers fall on our attachments, weeds grow in our dislike.

[44:48]

And disliking things is an unwise way to relate to them. And flowers bloom when you tend to them wisely and weeds wilt when you tend to them wisely. Any questions up to this point in the text? Yes? Could you give an example of fundamental and subtle and the growths? Fundamental and subtle? Yeah, the difference between... I'm not sure what the defilement here is. Oh, okay. The fundamental affliction... is sometimes spoken of in four ways.

[45:52]

This text mentions three kinds of taints, three kinds of outflows, but there's another one that this text doesn't mention. So the four types of outflows are One is called the taint of sensual desire, sensual greed, sensual desire. The taint of being. Next one's called the taint of views. And the next one's... Affliction of greed, hate, and delusion are grosser. Hatred is not mentioned in this original list. So for example, if you have these five sense capacities, if you attend to those five sense capacities,

[47:05]

or what's sometimes called the five chords of sensual pleasure, all these, your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tongue, and your skin, those are all organs which can experience, right? And if you're attending to these organs, if your attention to the organs is attending to them to get gratification through those five modes, then that way of attending to these sense modalities produces outflows. In particular, it produces the outflow of the taint of sensual desire, which can flare up into, you know, massive greed. But originally, it's kind of like wishing that they turn the lights up a little bit or wishing that people would talk a little louder a little more quietly but not just wishing that but being attending to the colors and the sounds and the smells each thing that you have in the realm attend with the agenda of getting gratification through these modes that kind of attention it tends to set up this deep

[48:30]

this deep pain in your system. Now, another one which is not available is if you're doing meditation and actually you wish to practice tranquility, for example, and you're attending to practice tranquility in order to get gratification through attaining various states of concentration. That's called the taint of being. You actually, like, I used to say, something materialism, but there was other kind of, well, there's materialism, right? And then there's spiritual materialism, and then there's psychological materialism. So psychological materialism is kind of like the second one. where you're trying to get a good psychological state. And the material, regular materialism is you're trying to get pleasure through the sensor.

[49:39]

Attending to that way, attending to your meditation in order to get good states of mind, which doesn't sound so bad, is actually not a wise way to attend to your meditation state. Even though you're trying to develop tranquility, if you're trying to develop tranquility in order to get gratification from tranquility, Okay? That's pretty subtle, isn't it? Because I just said we need to actually develop tranquility. You need it in order to actually hear the teaching which says to you now, if you develop tranquility in order to get gratification from the tranquility, that creates... But we didn't say develop tranquility in order to get gratification. We said develop tranquility in order to develop wisdom. Differently. If you're developing tranquility to get gratification, you will develop these cankers, these taints. That's what you'll get. If you develop tranquility just to get tranquility, that's not going to create a taint.

[50:45]

That's tranquility, if you're successful. And you can now then listen to the teaching. Do you see the difference? It's kind of subtle. That's why these are very subtle. These are the root the root kind of deviations from the truth. So the next one is, which is in the scripture, is when you attend to any mundane thing with what we call the perverted views or the upside-down views, and the four upside-down views, if you attend to any mundane phenomena with these four upside-down views, then you engender the taint of ignorance, which is, of course, the most fundamental one. What it means is if you look at a person, for example, a grandson, a spouse, a friend, and you look at them

[51:53]

And you think they're permanent? You view them as permanent? Because you're looking at an impermanent thing as though it's permanent. And this upside-down way of seeing people is quite common among people. To look at people as though... Of course, we know people aren't permanent, but we look at them as though they were. To look at your teeth as though they're permanent. though it's permanent. I just said it earlier. To look at your health and see it as permanent is an upside-down way of seeing it. And when you see your health in an upside-down way, namely as permanent, you become intoxicated. To look at things which basically as pleasurable. We do that. Like you said, well, like, you know, go to the grocery, go to the ice cream store to buy ice cream.

[52:58]

It's pleasurable to go do that. But to look at it that way, as though that's going to be pleasurable, to go to the store, that's an upside-down view, and that will create, that creates taint of ignorance. To look at what doesn't have a self, like, I don't have a self, Yoga room doesn't have a self. Berkeley doesn't have a self. To look at things as though they have a self. Look at things that don't have a self as though they have a self. That creates an outflow. And the other one is to look at what's not lovely. And by lovely, what lovely means is to look at something as though that thing was going to make you happy. And so to look at the compounded thing as though we're a pure thing, like, you know, like what people sometimes have when they sometimes drink alcohol, some other kind of intoxicant, and it's late at night and they're out with somebody and they look at the person and the person looks lovely.

[54:09]

You know, they don't just look lovely. Like, it's like. I mean, like they're, they don't, they look, well, you kind of like, they're kind of. Now, maybe still, you know, maybe they have a pimple or something, but you don't really see the pimple. They look like, they look like, you know, your dream come true. Because you're seeing them that way. They're not really your dream come true. They're wonderful. Wonderful. their living being. They deserve your love and devotion, but they ain't perfect. They aren't going to make you happy. But sometimes you think, well, maybe this time they will. And that when you look at them, you become intoxicated, or if you are intoxicated, you tend to look at them that way. They look really good. So you probably heard that joke, right, about the is when the bars are about ready to close everybody in the bar looks good the story used to be the women looked good but now everybody looks good you know what I'm talking about?

[55:25]

this way of looking at things in this upside down way engenders The taint of ignorance. And the other one is the taint of views, which is not in the scripture, but the taint of views comes basically from doubting the teaching and not applying the teaching to what you're looking. So you apply your view about what's going on to things. The teaching, let the teaching in your ear and let the teaching come into you and let the teaching talk about what you're seeing. Now, you look at what you think's going on. And then you think, oh, what I think this person is is what the person is, rather than listen to the teaching about what the person is. Teaching is what they are. But what you think people are is based on what they are, but it doesn't reach them. It's just based on them.

[56:30]

Teaching tells you that. And the teaching listens up your view of them, so your view of them doesn't become your view of them. In other words, say, well, this is my view of you, but I don't really believe it. I listen to the teachings. When you doubt the teaching, when you don't really deal with what you really know, but start to deal with what you think, you doubt the teaching and also you give rise to this taint of views. Taint of views. Those are the taint of views. We start to look at, I just gave examples, how to look at things in such a way that we call this this unwise way of looking at things. to look at a color. Can you imagine? Look at a color with the agenda of figuring out the location of looking at the color? That's an unwise way to look at colors. And that way, that will engender these outflows.

[57:32]

But then this will... clear what this is about as we go on. And he says, monks, bhikshus, there are taints that should be abandoned by seeing. So this is the first method, the method of seeing. And this word, this word seeing, I think, I don't know what Pali is. Pali might be dasana. Maybe it's darshana. You've probably heard of darshan. You look at the teacher. This is darshan that you see. And this kind of seeing is, this is, basically you're going to now abandon some of the contains by seeing. They're going to try to like educate you about how to see. And they're going to start out with negative examples. First, I'm going to tell you about how people don't see very well.

[58:39]

rather than tell you how to do it. There are taints that should be abandoned by restraining. That's the second method. There are taints that should be abandoned by using. Third method. There are taints that should be abandoned by enduring. There are taints that should be abandoned by avoiding. There are taints that should be abandoned by removing. There are taints that should be abandoned by developing or cultivating. What taints Bhikshus should be abandoned by seeing? Here Bhikshus, an untaught ordinary person who has no regard for the noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined in the Dharma, who has no regard for true men or women and is unskilled and undisciplined in their Dharma, does not understand what things are fit for attention, unfit for attention,

[59:41]

Since this is so, since that is so, he attends to those things unfit for attention and does not attend to those things that are fit for attention. Okay. Now, I want to say, when I first read this, I thought, wait a minute. I don't feel good about saying, does not understand what things are fit for attention and what things are unfit for attention. I thought, everything's fit for attention. It isn't, you know, yeah, it isn't like that. But that happens, right? So here it says what things are fit for attention and what things are unfit for attention.

[60:48]

But I think what we're really talking about is what mode of attention is wise and what mode of attention is unwise. Not so much the . And these things can be like objects, physical objects, but they can also be ideas. And they can be ideas or thoughts. So you could say, what kind of ideas are fit for attention, what kind of ideas are unfit for attention? I don't think some ideas are fit for attention. I think that it's more that when you pay attention to things in such a way that the outflows that happen arise then that's what we say something you shouldn't that does not fit for attention you look but really it's not the thing that's not fit for attention but you shouldn't be looking at the thing the way you're looking at it because the way you're looking at the thing it's not that the woman or the man is not fit for attention but the woman in such a way that an outflow that hasn't arisen arises or an outflow that has arisen increases that's not a fit way to look at the person

[62:10]

fit way to look at things is that when you look at something, if it doesn't arise and if the outflow has arisen, it's abandoned. That's the way to look at things. So then it goes on to say, what are the things unfit for attention that he attends to? They are things such that when he attends to them, the desire arises in him. So we're back to this place, right? So it's not that you're not supposed to look at pretty people or mangoes. I love mangoes. You're not supposed to look at mangoes because when you do, sensual desire to look at mangoes, it's just that you look at them not trying to get gratification from the taste or the look of the mango so it's unfit unfit to the ending of outflows or unfit or inappropriate to the end of suffering is to look at a mango or a person attending to how you're going to get gratified by this visual

[63:33]

or olfactory or gustatory or aural or visual dimension, or mental things. To think of mental things with the idea... I'll hold that one back. This is first essential things.

[63:55]

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