As you know, we only have a couple more classes during this practice period. From my point of view, I didn't quite finish what I wanted to talk about. I don't think I'll be able to. So given that limitation, I think about what's the most important thing. I guess what comes to my lips is that it'd be better that what is said and be very clear, rather than say a lot of interesting things. So as a result, I've been going, you know, over and over, somewhat similar material, and have not moved ahead to some things I would really like to talk with you about.

[01:08]

But I feel that what's most important is that the, not so much that what I have to say, that you hear it exactly, but something like this. Something like, something gets through, something gets through to the system that wasn't in there before. And in that last class, I felt kind of bad at the end, but one person, at least, one person heard something. And that really makes it all worthwhile. It's not so much that one person exactly heard me, but one person, I think, heard Dharma. And all my jumping up and down is kind of like, not that I'm conveying the dharma to you, but that I'm jumping up and down. And you might wonder, what am I jumping up and down about? And then you'll wonder something might enter from someplace.

[02:11]

And I think that happens sometimes. And I usually don't know when it happens. I mean, I'm just jumping up and down. And then somebody hears the dharma. I don't know what it was or anything. That's what counts. So in turn, I wanted to again draw the, not, I want to draw a few words on the board and write conventional over here, again, on one side. And the ultimate, conventional truth and the ultimate truth. Conventional truth, the conventional point of view and ultimate point of view. On the conventional side, we have things like good and bad or evil. And they're different.

[03:15]

On the other side we don't really have good and bad as being. inherently existing things. And therefore they're kind of the same in the sense that they're both fundamentally the same, namely they depend on the core eyes. On this side we have karma, you know, I do, send world, karma. And the alternate point of view is beyond karma. On this side we have the ten Bodhisattva, well we have sixteen great Bodhisattva precepts, or ten, well this is like the ten, the ten great precepts. Because they're very much easy to understand in terms of action. And over here we also have the ten precepts.

[04:27]

But you're not understood in terms of action. This side, they're understood in terms of individual action. Over here, they're not understood in terms of individual action. On the ultimate point of view, the ten-grade precepts are understood from the point of view of the concerted activity of all beings. It's not a personal thing. So this is somewhat familiar to you, right, this way of talking? On the conventional side, we have to be very careful. And being careful with good and bad, and trying to develop skill at being careful about good and bad, we develop a great store of merit, positive energy, and great spiritual opportunities. For example, we could have a chance to do a practice period.

[05:31]

So according to usual conventional understanding of action, all of us have done something very good to be able to have this opportunity for this three-week practice period. So if I may congratulate us all for what we have done, as karmic beings to be able to do this practice period together. It is a great thing for us, and we get it not by accident. It is a blessing that comes to us by our inconceivable past good action. This is the conventional point of view about karma, according to the Buddhist convention. This side, on this side, we have what is called, excuse the expression, deep faith or deep belief in causation. In the conventional sense, this is where we develop deep faith in causation.

[06:37]

This is where I practice virtue. And where you practice virtue. And where I practice hopefully the virtue of seeing you practice virtue. And I don't practice the evil of seeing you do evil. I practice virtue. I always see and rejoice in other people's virtue. That's one of the virtues I try to practice on this side that I try to do. All by myself. Not excluding people either, because that wouldn't be virtuous. Letting everybody in on it if they want to. But in the meantime, doing my job, be very careful, very careful about little tiny things. So as to be as best I can from my limited understanding, the best I can to do what I think is good and to refrain from what I think is not good. and also refrain from thinking that I know what's good and refrain from, or guard against, thinking that I know what is bad.

[07:52]

But given what I think is good, I definitely try to practice that. And given what I think is bad, I definitely try to be careful to avoid that. All this is very careful kind of work, very careful, cautious, And even a little bit afraid of what would happen if I did do bad. But not really afraid, just kind of like try to stay present with it and just feel, you know, the anxiety that we naturally feel when we think of doing bad. What? And also rejoice, enthusiastically rejoice in how great it would be if we did something good. You know, that's on this side. And that's what we call, this side then is called practicing, for the Buddha said, practicing all virtues. I practice all virtues. Be gentle, careful, upright, and harmonious.

[09:01]

If we practice on this side thoroughly, really settle into the ordinary world, conventional world, all the way with deep, deep dedication and thoroughness, we will see the world from the other side. We will see the pentacle arising. We will see the Dharma in these activities which we are doing from a dualistic point of view. will come forth. And these precepts, which we're practicing from a dualistic, personal, karmic point of view, these precepts will start to show their light. It is very good to practice these precepts and to do these good things from a dualistic point of view. It's very good to do so. However, It is, in the end, you know, it's hard. And we don't want to do it, like, forever, really. And just keep always, always, always being careful, always worried. We also want to be free.

[10:06]

Turns out when you're free, you're happy to go back and practice that way again. That's called beginner's mind. So when you first came to Zen [...] You yourself are beyond worried because you understand what you are. And what you are, when you understand that, is something that cannot be heard anymore. Because you're just simply all beings. And so you worry for all beings, not yourself. And particularly you worry for those who don't yet see the truth, and even more you worry for those who won't even be careful of cause and effect. These are the people we have to really worry about.

[11:08]

And if we don't be careful about it, we really should worry about ourselves. But today I want to, although I am shy to do so, I want to convey to you how fundamental it is to be careful of cause and effect. how absolutely necessary it is and how it's a foundation for other practices, that it's a foundation for practices of liberation. By itself, as you may have heard many times, this kind of care for the minute details of conduct, by all by itself, is not sufficient for liberation, you also must do further meditations, but these meditations will come to you after you do this, or based on this, not after, based on this, built on this, are liberative meditation.

[12:18]

And as Norman said in Zang, we just throw you right into the liberative meditations and I hope that you practice the limited meditation in such a way that you practice this kind of care for cause and effect. That's why we put emphasis on posture. Be very careful of your posture and the way you touch things and move things in this endo. That's a hint about that aspect. Dugan Zenji wrote two fascicles which are not at the beginning of the Shobo Genzo, which in a sense they should be at the beginning. In a sense, according to usual Buddhist teaching, he wrote chapters on taking refuge and on the precepts. They should be at the beginning. And he wrote two chapters on cause and effect or causation.

[13:26]

They also should be at the beginning. Those all should be at the beginning of the book. But he has, instead of at the beginning, Genzo Koan, which is, you know, such a pure Zen teaching. But he grew up on that other teaching, you know, to produce that kind of thing. So it's this signature, emblematic teaching of Dogenes at the beginning. But actually, he has other teachings which are more traditional and foundational later in Shobo Genzo. It's partly because I think he grew up on that stuff and didn't think it was necessary to mention it. But then as the Shobo Ginza started to accumulate, maybe he thought, well, I probably, since I've said all this, I probably should just mention the obvious too while I'm at it. So that, you know, later my body of work will have mentioned, you know, what is the foundation in terms of dualistic practice for this non-dual practice. And non-dual practice, practice beyond karma, also is non-dual, not only in terms of itself, but it's non-dual with conventional practice.

[14:33]

So looking at this board from out here is the non-duality of those two. They're totally non-dual. All the time. So... The chapters that Dogen wrote about this, one's called Deep Faith and Causality, or Deep Faith and Faith and Caused in Effect. The other one's called Karmist Retribution in Three Times. I think the Buddha said something like, in the Dhammapali, didn't he say something like, you are what you think, basically? You think so? Can you say that? That's to you often, huh? First chapter. Yeah, first chapter he said, basically, you are what you think. So that's one of the basic teachings. Buddha said, pretty much, if you do skillful things, if you do things carefully and skillfully, if you do good, in other words, it is fruitful.

[15:43]

It is good. Good actions lead to good. Elsa said, bad actions lead to bad. Hearing many things he said about this, I boil it down to that statement, that English statement. Good leads to good, and bad leads to bad. Or, good goes with good, and bad goes with bad. And I would also say, you know, again, he also kind of suggested, and his disciples have suggested over the centuries, good always leads to good, never to bad. And bad always leads to bad, never to good. It's so simple. And so boring. And so awesome. Now, good means also, this good that we're talking about here is, first of all, in a conventional sense, it is conventional. In other words, it is contextual.

[16:48]

In other words, it's not a universal good, first of all. Universal good also leads to universal good. Of course, maybe that makes sense to you. And there is no such thing as universal bad. But there is contextual good and contextual bad. And what is contextual good is what I think is good in this situation according to my sense of what's going on here. In other words, trying to harmonize with what seems to be happening here and then thinking of what's good. That's what I mean by good for me. And again, I don't have to think that's a universal good or that would be true some other time. That's not necessary. Matter of fact, it's good not to think that. Under the present circumstances, this is fine. Like having these clothes on, in the present situation, you seem to be fairly wholesome. It's warm. And not shocking anybody, not confusing anybody, at least you people.

[17:49]

But if I were to draw other places, people would be shocked and confused, so it wouldn't be good. And I kind of sensed that. So I don't. Right? Some situations, Bane Institute are more appropriate and won't shock anybody. But to where Bane Institute is class, it should be shocking. So it might even be bad. It might be harmful. No. Anyway, I don't think it's good. So I wear this because I thought this would be better. So good always produces good. Bad always produces bad. And produces, again, is dualistic. On this side, Nagarjuna will teach us The causation is empty. The causes do not have the power within themselves to produce a result. That isn't the way the world really works. But in a conventional world, we have to respect the fact that we think this cause will produce that effect.

[18:54]

This meanness will produce unfortunateness for me. I have to accept that because we are what we think. If you think that way, you will become that way. If you think mean thoughts, you will become miserable. Not that you're really thinking good thoughts, bad thoughts, not that you really are miserable, but that's what you'll think. You'll think, I am really good and bad. And before you thought, if you remember, if someone else could help you remember, remember yesterday you thought about that person? Are you done? Is it too heavy? Okay, now it's a little heavier. The retribution or the effects from karma come in three time zones. This lifetime, the beginning, middle or end of the next lifetime, or even in the anticipation of the intermediate realm before the next lifetime, comes then and through that lifetime.

[20:02]

It also comes in lifetimes beyond the next lifetime. but we're two lifetimes away, three, four, up to limitless lifetimes. This is a key thing to understand, this teaching that bad always goes to bad and good always goes to good. So, for example, We see in this world some people are cruel and etc. They seem to be vicious and selfish and so on. They seem to be healthy, nice house, and everybody's nice to them. Except even the people who are being tormented by them sort of like put up with it. And they have a lot of friends. We think, how could that be? And then we see some other people who see it to be quite good, and we know them fairly well, so we know they can't be hiding too much.

[21:03]

They seem to be quite good, quite kind, and they're afflicted by all kinds of difficulty, and people are mean to them. Not you, because you can see how good they are, or maybe you even are. I can't help it. The person just sort of invokes, I just want to spit on them. They're really nice, you know. Maybe that's his dream, but some people are quite good, and they seem to have a hard time, and a lot of people are mean to them. But they look like they're very virtuous. The explanation of this is that in a past life, this cruel person, this person... This person, not this person like that person, but a person who leads to this person, was very good. And this person is experiencing the good karma of that past life, and they're abusing it. They're riding on it and fruiting away that good karma. They will, either in this life or in future lives, get incalculable difficulty because of what they're doing now.

[22:10]

And the good things that are happening now are from what they did in the past. And the person who is virtuous now and having a hard time was not so virtuous at least on one occasion in the past. That's what Buddha said, Buddha talked like this, and some of his more visionary disciples have seen this and verified this. That's why this is a little different from the Pentacle Horizon. The Pentacle Horizon you're not asked to believe in or take on faith. It means nothing to take it out of faith. You have to actually witness it. These things you cannot witness. Even if you're liberated, you might not be able to witness this because it takes a special vision to be able to actually see what was done to cause this. And Buddha and other people could actually see what was done. And they told people sometimes what caused this. There are a few people on the planet right now who can do that. And not so many, I think.

[23:11]

And part of the reason why that's, well, I think part of the reason why there's not so many is because people don't want to hear about this right now. not in Rome, in the West, anyway. Here's another example that Dogen Zenji points out. There was, and again, this is a Buddha talking, no, this is not a Buddha talking, this is what's called Abhidharma Mahavibhasa. It's a big compendium of Abhidharma works from which the Abhidharma kosha is a summary, or the essence of it. And there's lots of stories of Carmen. There's all these stories about Carmen. One of the stories is there was a person who in this lifetime, in a particular lifetime, always did good. And there was another person who always did bad. I would say this, that if a person always does good in this lifetime, I think probably fairly likely they kind of think that doing good leads to good.

[24:19]

That's why they do it. Partly it leads. Maybe they do it just for joy. But I think they probably also have a sense that there's some good results of it. That's partly joy. And when you do good things, it isn't just fun at the time, but also other people like it and so on and so forth. And the person who always does bad, I think, probably didn't cross his mind or her mind that there would be negative results. In other words, they didn't really think that that's the way things work. That's why they could consistently do bad. Or they kind of sort of knew it, but they didn't really believe it. So the story goes on to say that when the person who always did good was about to die... As the intermediate existence started to manifest to his eyes, he saw that he was headed for the big pit, the land of torment, which we sometimes call hell. And he thought, and I could have thought, oh, here I was practicing good my whole life.

[25:22]

What a waste. You know, now look what happened. That was really stupid of me to do that. And I'll never do that again. I'm just, well, I don't know what. Anyway, he put us off that, but he didn't. He thought, oh, oh, this is too bad for me. Okay, well, this is the way it works. I guess I did at least one bad thing before this life, because in this life, I didn't do anything. I always was totally focused on practicing good. So it must have been something from a previous life. And thinking that thought, he, even under that frightening circumstance of seeing himself go to hell, and shocked by it, after doing all that good, he still meditated on the law of cause and effect, the Buddha's teaching. In other words, he was still taking refuge in Buddha, in Buddha and Dharana. And that particular aspect of Buddha Dharma, namely the teaching of Not dependent co-arising. That's the different term in the teaching of cause and effect.

[26:26]

Meditating on dependent co-arising would be even more useful. Dependent co-arising would be how meditating on how the causes and effects dependently co-arise and are empty. But he wasn't doing that. He was meditating in a conventional sense of, I must have done something bad because that's how things work. And the dawning of the hellish destiny evaporated in that recognition and acceptance of the teaching of cause and effect. And then a different destiny started to manifest before him of a celestial bliss land, which he went to instead. This might be somewhat difficult for you to listen to because there's rebirth stuff, intermediate zones. But at least the easy thing about it is it's about your mind. So maybe you can see that this is about your mind. And how our mind is what sends us into destiny.

[27:29]

The way we think is fundamentally... what we are. So, see, this is all in your mind. But mind leads to action, leads to physical results. The other one who would get bad all the time, same time as he was dying, his destiny started to manifest before his eyes and he saw What is it? Heaven! He thought, well, great. And I had, you know, I had an easy time here. I didn't have to ever be careful in this lifetime. And I was always just doing whatever I felt like, never had to consider other people, just sort of hit with the ball. And, you know, I was bad, but I didn't think I was going to get rewarded for that, though. Wow. Well, I guess that thing about closet back was a bunch of crap anyway. Good. Good. So I'm going to go and have a ball in heaven too. I'm going to be like the worst cat in heaven. Here we go. And then his heavenly destiny evaporated and he went to hell. Fast.

[28:30]

Because, primarily because he did the worst thing, the worst thing of all is to deny cause and effect. Because not only does that lead you to do at least one bad thing right at that time and then probably one in the next moment, but it sets your mind on the wrong track so that you haven't run into much chance. That's why you can immediately change your destiny by your understanding in that way. But it didn't stop the thing manifesting. And he might have run into some other troubles later. But anyway, that time, that particular thing changed. But it did manifest, so the results did manifest. He could have thought, oh, wow, I've been bad this whole life, but I must have done something in a bad past life. That's why this is happening. Then he would have gone to heaven, probably. Because he would have recovered from his lifetime of whatever, bad, and at least at that time, so I see, oh my God, wow, this is amazing.

[29:33]

Because this does not make sense at all according to what I did. It must be law of cause and effect. And also, this is retribution from a past life. Yes. So it seems like if you're doing evil, doing bad, that it would be good karma to have really bad things happening so that you could... Well, it's not exactly good karma, but it's good because dharma's good. It's the dharma. It is good. I think it's good. But that doesn't always happen because, I mean, you could do bad and then that... That's right. It is kind of forth. It would be nice in some ways if right away, as soon as we did anything bad, we got slapped in the face by, you know, all subject beings. And in fact, we do get slapped in the face, but we don't get it sometimes. So that is kind of nice in a way. But some things are so trivial that if that was the case, life would be just a totally different thing. So generally speaking, the things that you get retribution in this life for are killing somebody, stealing her horse, having sex with somebody else's spouse, taking lots of toxins.

[30:49]

These kinds of things are what you get retribution. We talk about instant retribution, or rather rapid retribution, at least in this lifetime. But there's little things, there's little things which you get delayed retribution for. But also, not only delayed, but also another rule of karma is that it usually increases, especially if it's internal, it grows. So like a little thing in this life, you won't necessarily get negative feedback for it. But in a later light, like the greatest elaboration of what it could happen, what it could be sometimes manifests. It's kind of interesting that in witch training, they say that once you become a witch, what you wish was, what you try to energize, will come back in three times. Not once, but threefold. I'm living in Zen for the Buddha.

[31:57]

Once you're on the path, whatever that means, once you're a streamer, it's a karmic But if Carla, then the books amplify. Also amplify, in the sense of coming back even slowly, or whatever, in terms of loss and effect. Let me just bracket that to see if the answer comes to me, okay? But how about, is for everybody? Is that true for everybody? And the answer to that is, yes, it's true for everybody. But in other words, so you could say, well, the truth for everybody, that means you're on the path. So in the Dharma realm, that's the way it works for everybody. What do we say? What is this expression? If you cast bread upon the water? Cast bread upon the water. Is that expression? Huh? What does that mean? Well, you give away some bread. In other words, you throw some bread in the ocean. But what comes back is, what was it, toast and coffee?

[32:58]

Huh? I said, not usually. Maybe next life. Okay? So, the idea is that it does come back bigger for everybody. If you do a cruel thing, a mean thing, it comes back not just three times, but in Buddhism, three is a symbol for infinity, meaning many. It comes back bigger. Unless it comes back right away, then it might come back approximately. It seems like you kill somebody, you immediately get killed. But doing something less than killing somebody, you get maybe more torment than being killed many times. Slight, slight trivial unkindnesses and unskillfulnesses can produce huge negative consequences and slight positive things can produce huge positive results.

[34:02]

A woman once gave Buddha a little bit of, made a little treat for Buddha. And Buddha said, you will be enlightened because of this. And your Buddha name will be such and such. And her husband said, oh, Buddha, please don't say that. It can't be so that this little thing will produce such great enlightenment and she'll be such and such a Buddha. And he wasn't being selfish. He just couldn't believe it was that way. And Buddha then explained it and how it works. And the man could see, oh, wow. tiny good leading to the greatest positive result. Of course, giving something to the Buddha is really a great opportunity. So you don't necessarily get quite that good a result to give to non-Buddhas, but still, it multiplies out. And there's interest here. Yes? Okay, what if in your past, I reflect and I look back at time in my late teens, early 20s, and I think, oh, I really did some awful cruel things and now I'm in you know learning the Dharma and reflect and where does that work in terms of karmic consequences and sort of like the healing of it or the like am I like am I just oh man I'm screwed because that stuff is going to come up no matter what or can I kind of

[35:24]

Any kind of what? I don't know. Acknowledge it and, I don't know, like, I don't know, I don't know. Okay, another one. She said, she acknowledged it. She said, she acknowledged it. And there is? Yes, yes. And if you acknowledge these things, if I acknowledge these things I've done, okay, if I acknowledge these things I know I've done, if I do that, okay, I am purified and released, okay, that doesn't mean that they're not going to come. That does not mean that. If I confess it, I, you know, I'm practicing Dharma. Buddha did that himself. Buddha also confessed some boo-boos he made in the past. When you confess, you are redeemed. But redemption doesn't mean you don't do karma stuff working on you. It just means that when it comes, you've been redeemed. So you're redeemed, what he calls, sitting duck. And when it hits, you have a really good chance of practicing his armor when it hits. Then he's saying, okay, here it comes, okay?

[36:26]

This is it. You'll come. Kind of like when a safe fellow, like you used that analogy, it wasn't like, oh man, this is my bad luck, but being able to sit and go, okay, I'm in the hospital and here I am. You have a chance to practice as the karma manifests on you if you confessed it beforehand and also if you're practicing from now on, you have the best chance of coping with the stuff that's coming. And I think in my life, you know, I often say, you know, how could I be so fortunate? It doesn't make any sense. Which I think a lot of you would agree. How could I be so fortunate? I have not, in this lifetime, been... I have not done enough good in this lifetime to... to justify or warrant the benefits that I have received. It just doesn't make any sense to me. I could not, I could not, if what I did in the first 20-some years of my life, it does not justify the mediuses of curation.

[37:34]

It does not justify it. I cannot see it. None of that. But I've seen other people who I was fairly close to and I watched their life and they were more virtuous than me in the first 20-some years that I was with them. More virtuous than me, as far as I could tell. And I knew them pretty well. But they did not get to meet the situation. It doesn't make any sense. Okay, that's right. But anyway, these same people were tormented and abused and, you know, have a lot of problems that I didn't have. I also had good health, you know. There are some people who are afflicted by various kinds of illnesses, and they also have virtuous life. And if various difficult, tremendous difficulty comes their way, it doesn't come my way. It doesn't make sense. The only way I can make sense of it is that in a past life, somebody did something good.

[38:38]

Not me, I wasn't there, but somebody did something good, and that somebody, or those somebodies, the momentum of their life stimulates a birth which I enjoy a very, very fortunate birth. I have not done enough in this life to deserve this. And neither that, but, you know, I've abused the opportunity. I haven't been grateful enough and careful enough with the good karma that I was born with. So I did these, and now I have to get ready for the things that I've done based on my good karma that's going to come down to me in this life for afterwards. So that's why I have to continue to be careful from now on, but also practice Dharma so that when this stuff comes, because it's going to come, I've done stuff which is much greater than some of these little things, which I've heard other people have done, which cause tremendous difficulty. Like a landlady of a gang of thieves, just a landlady for a gang of thieves, in a future life, she had the same number of sons as they were in the gang, and all her sons were killed.

[39:48]

because he was the landlady for these thieves. What happened to the thieves? We won't even talk about it. They got in trouble in that life plus many other lives. A tiny, you know, like what's his name, Atisha, the great Indian teacher who went to Tibet, you know, he was called, they called him the Taking Refuge Lama and the Causiness Dekh Lama. He was a great, great teacher, but he just always talked about, not just, but he mainly talked about taking refuge and faith in causing effect. And he said to people, people said, when he heard that people called him, he said, that's a good name for me. And just calling me that will be beneficial to people. One time he was, somebody was near him and made a slight, you know, a slight little indiscretion or suit. And he said, I can't help it, you know, I just gotta mention that you can't do these little things. It just, it's not that kind of situation.

[40:53]

You can't afford this. You can see that, you know. So, okay, Lee? I can understand when you're talking about karma, the energy that's passed along, and this is bad energy, and I can see it happening in this very light, this particular body I am now. And I can see that it gets passed on to the future, even after I'm dead, certain energies. Yes. You can see that in your own children and your own family. I don't actually see that if I do bad in this particular life, I'm, you know, too, like, well, they believe in Asia often, I'm going to come back, you know, a snake or something. I have a good story about the snake thing, yes? So, I mean, it seems to say that if you, you know, that there's like a soul, which I don't believe who is in front of you.

[41:56]

Does he say that there's a soul? Well, then it strongly suggests that you come back, you will suffer in the next life. Okay, can I say something now? If you don't, if you really don't think there's a soul, I mean, if you're really free of that kind of way of thinking of an individual soul, if you're not holding on to that idea, and you don't think there's any other separate soul, and you just see everything's interconnected, in other words, you see the emptiness of all things, if you understand that, you do not any longer think that you'd do anything. So if you don't think there's a soul, you're not gonna see it any place else, and you're not gonna do any more karma, because you have no basis upon which to karmically operate. But if you have the slightest bit of self-cleaning, then you think so, and you say you don't think so, but it's not Buddhism that says that that's so. Buddhism says people think that way, and since people think that way, The way they think goes this way. If you think this individual self, then you're going to think an individual self goes on day to day to day to day.

[42:57]

And you're going to think that it goes into another rebirth. And the rebirth is going to go into, if you thought you did that, it's going to be horrendous. That's what you think. Now, if you don't think that way, it's different. But Buddhism is not telling you to think that way. Buddhism said, if you do think that way, this is how it will work. This is the way your thoughts evolve. This is a mental evolution teaching. I absolutely don't believe in rebirth, actually. And I mean, I never have. And I really, I find that it keeps being suggested. It never was exactly straight on, but it's certainly talked about a lot. I never can see it as more than a medical for what happens right now in my life. If I fall into all hell realms, I fall into them now. I can't see what's happening in the next life, but I don't believe there is more. Okay. So you can see it as a metaphor. The conventional world is a metaphor for what's actually going on.

[43:59]

It's a verbal metaphor that we make up together. Yes, it is a metaphor. And the metaphor you have is a metaphor of there isn't. a future life. That's your metaphor. That's your story about what's actually going on. Okay? They both can't be true, right? One's got to be true and one's got to be false. It's a contradiction. No. Well, listen, just listen. Two false things don't have to, when you have two false things, one doesn't have to be right and the other wrong. They're both false. They're both false. Ultimately. What? I'm talking about... I'm talking about conventional truth. Conventional truth is a covering over reality. Conventional truth is the way things appear to us and the way we think about things. It's not the way they actually are. The way we think things are separate. We can't. We all know it actually. That's what you're saying.

[45:00]

What's actually happening is cannot be grasped by our mind. That's right. So you're telling us a story to make us feel good, maybe? I'm telling you a story to make you lay the foundation for realization beyond your consciousness. What if I got caught up in that story and I didn't get any realization because I was so caught up? If you get caught up in the story, then hopefully someone will help you realize, George, if you're getting caught up in the story. Hopefully, but life is going to happen. That's right. And... That's part of what Silvia was worried about in terms of these precepts. There is one of the ways to misunderstand these precepts. If you take them seriously and think that they're important, one of the ways to misunderstand them is that we all have an understanding of what they mean today. And tomorrow our understanding will be different. But if you have an understanding today and you hold to that, that's called shilabharata paramarsha. which means that you hold, you adhere to the conventional understanding of the precepts.

[46:02]

And conventional understanding is always, for starters, what you think they mean. It's your conventional understanding. The best you have with language and talking to people is your current understanding of what these mean. So each of us has a conventional understanding of what... trying to spiders and still clean the webs. That's my current struggle. Some people will say, that's not what it means. You can kill spiders. It means don't kill people and horses or something. Someone else may say, you can kill people, but just don't kill white people or something like that. Different people have different understandings, different conventions about these precepts, but whatever your understanding is, if you hold to that, that's a problem. And that's part of the conventional teaching is don't hold to your understanding of these precepts. Study them and do your best, but don't hold to the idea, I know what not killing means and so on. And if we practice with them in that way, our eyes open up and we, you know, our spiritual eye opens up and we realize Things look like they are after a while.

[47:04]

In other words, we see that things depend on the core eyes. Nothing abides, right? Nothing abides. We see that. Do I believe it? Do you believe it? Or is that just an opinion of your... I don't believe it, but it makes a lot of sense to me. And when occasionally... In other words, you're saying things may actually abide. No, no, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is... You're not sure of anything. I'm pretty sure. But not by believing, but by my experience. Occasionally, I have occasionally tapped into the mind that doesn't have an abode. And when I'm there, I love everyone, I'm not afraid of anything, and I'm ready to do whatever is necessary for the welfare of others, and I don't have any problems or worries about myself. That's why I was thinking the Buddha could say the same thing. He was at a time when people believed in the incarnation, and he wanted to help them. So he told them a story that pacified their minds. But ultimately, maybe that story isn't so good. Yeah, maybe it isn't. Maybe this is a big mistake what I'm doing. But even in the time of Buddha, some of the stories he told, which again, he might have been just... He didn't want to offend their belief systems, perhaps.

[48:08]

Well, but people didn't seem to believe in that reincarnation theory so thoroughly. See, they believed in reincarnation, but they didn't believe in that, you know, good leads to good and bad leads to bad. So he added that part. Maybe they had reincarnation going for them. But maybe this whole thing, everything he said was like a little bit of a white lie. That he just said to help people. And in a way he kind of said that. He said, in a way, I'm just saying this to help you. It's not like what I'm saying is true. Because what I'm saying is just words. But Buddha's words are intended to set us free from our own words. So we're caught in the conventional world of words and stories, and then Buddha tells stories to us to, as you say, make us relax, but also make us work and admit our stories. If we can admit our stories completely, we'll become free of our stories. So if somebody wants to tell another story, like, for example, good leads to bad and bad leads to good, let's hear somebody who wants to talk about that, and we'll make a new convention. But it's going to be hard to establish that because we've done all this work so far to establish what is good,

[49:14]

kind of generally speaking. Like for example, here's one more story just for you to chew on. There was once a woodcutter who was traveling through the woods and it started snowing and he got really cold and almost was frozen to death and a bear found him. And the bear took him to his cave and warmed him up and then went and got him some food bear food, basically, you know, nuts and berries and stuff, and fed them to the man. But also, because the man had trouble digesting bear food, the bear kept him warm for six days, close to his body. And then after six days, the weather cleared, and the man could travel, so he went back home. No, he didn't go back home. First of all, he said to the bear, he got down on his knees, and he said, you know, I will never forget this kindness you've done to me. I'm so overwhelmed and grateful to you. I will do anything to help you. What can I do to help you? And the bear says, well, you don't have to do anything.

[50:17]

But if you could, if anybody, if hunters try to come and find me, you could at least tell them, don't tell them where I am. And maybe even kind of like protect me from them. The man said, no problem. He went back home and as soon as he got back to His village, he saw some hunters, and they said, have you seen any wild animals? He said, yeah. I saw a bear, as a matter of fact. And I'll tell you where it is if I get two-thirds of the meat. So they went, showed him where the bear was. They killed the bear. They split the bear flesh up into three piles, and he went to get his two, and he reached out, and his arms fell off. They say like a string of pearls being broke apart. They just dropped off. The hunters went, ooh. They said to the guy, do you know something that we don't? He said, well, yes, actually. This bear actually saved my life and was my great benefactor. And they said, you did that to this bear after this bear did this to you?

[51:17]

Well, now it seems like you should have been vaporized on the spot. So the hunters took all the meat and took it to a Buddhist temple, a Buddhist monastery, and gave it to the monks to figure out what to do with it. As a gift. If they could eat it, they could eat it. They didn't know what to do with it. They didn't know if it should be eaten or what. Maybe they could take it and give it to the poor or something. But they didn't know what to do with it because of where it came from. And they rightly gave it to some people who maybe could figure it out. So the senior monk entered into meditation and saw who this bear was. And saw that it was such and such a great bodhisattva, had a name. And bodhisattvas could take any form that benefits beings. And it took the form of the bear in this case. And so they did eat the bear, they cremated it and built a stew before it.

[52:20]

So, that's a story. That's something that happened in that lifetime. A big evil that he got... But that's just a story, right? Now, I tell that story because, to me, it is good. to find someone in the forest who's cold and it's good. Take him, pick him up and take him and warm him up. That's good. I like that. It's something to do, something good about it. Now, maybe some other people share that. Maybe there's some convention about that. And then that it's good to be grateful to somebody who does that for you. And it would really be bad if somebody did something like that for me. If I wouldn't, you know, if I would betray that, that would be, well, that would be really, really bad. And if I would hurt them. So, you know, one of the things Shanti Davis says, you know, like if you accumulate a mountain of merit and then you're angry for one moment, the merit evaporates immediately.

[53:23]

But one interpretation of that is if you get angry at a bodhisattva, if you get angry at someone who's like being kind to you, that would be extremely bad and that could eliminate all your merit. So that's a convention. I have that convention that to be angry or cruel to someone who is kind to me is particularly heinous. That's my convention. And I think it was good that those woodcutters didn't take, when they heard that, they didn't take the need. I think that was good. I think it's good when a bird flies into the window that you pick it up and keep it warm for a little while and maybe it'll recover. And they often do if you keep them warm. They're dazed, you know. But if you leave them on the ground sometimes, maybe they get cold and go into shock. But if you pick them up and keep them warm, they often come to life again. I think that's good. But that's just convention. Maybe there's some world where that's not good or some circumstances where it's not good. It's possible. Who can see that? With my limited view, I have some understanding of what is good and some understanding of what's not good.

[54:28]

I act on that. And the Buddha, this whole thing, this whole talk today is to encourage us to act on what we think is good and to not act on what we think is not good. But it's all in convention, you know, this dualistic world. And to make it clear that this kind of deep commitment to do that is the foundation of the practices of liberation. Now, without doing these things, we don't have a chance to really do practice. And again, Eastern teachers have often noticed that a lot of us were attracted to Zen by the liberative practices, by the wonderful practices which set these wonderful bodhisattvas free at the culmination of their practice. We went and practiced that. That's Zazen. That's the practice that all Buddhas do to enter enlightenment, is to practice upright sitting in the self-fulfilling awareness. They all do that. All of them enter into meditation on exchanging self with others and enter the Buddha way. They all do that.

[55:29]

So we're attracted to that. We want to practice that. That's good. But... A lot of teachers have found that Westerners come to practice, but they haven't done, they don't have the moral background and the moral, you know, foundation of moral practices of like taking seriously, doing good and not doing evil. So they try to do these practices, but they slip and slide, you know, on the slopes of studying dependent co-arising because they don't pay attention to what they're doing. They don't really care if they do good or bad. They don't have much of a chance to do these subtle meditations. If you're willing to get down to the nitty-gritty details of like this slight thing can cause a big good or a big bad, and you face that world, then you have a chance to face some of these subtle things. But also, the workings of cause and effect are more subtle than the pentacle rising. The pentacle rising actually is kind of a gross affair, actually. It's kind of gross, you know, how it is that we help each other. It's not that difficult to see. If you sit still, you can actually start to see pretty easily how we mutually create each other.

[56:32]

But how our own individual action leads to good and bad, that's more subtle. Yes, Bob? I didn't talk to this story, and I think I'm having some idea about what it means, but I'd like to check it out. See, if you're telling a story to yourself, you want to check it out? Yeah, I want to take or see what I'm thinking is actually what you're trying to say. This idea of a small action had to come very large with that. Yes. Perhaps a large magnitude action being swept away by this small action. I guess the way I'm sort of hearing that is perhaps that this small action is so turning when you're very close to what you know is right and... Know is right or think is right?

[57:37]

No. When you're perhaps feeling fairly centered in your own... true nature in a sense. But you choose at that moment, knowing that, to do a little bad thing. Yes. But there's a turning there, a very intentional kind of, might not be a large magnitude of the action that you do in the algorithm, but the magnitude in the inner world is that you're seeing very clearly that what you're doing is turning away from what is good. Yes. Whereas a lot of times it seems that, and if you think about what, you know, the whole law. Could I, can I repeat for just a second there? Yeah. So are you saying that in the inner world, in the inner world is a big change? It's a big change. Yeah, okay. It's a big thing, whereas sometimes when you think about the argument of, you know, temporary insanity. You know, somebody who kills somebody or whatnot, maybe that moment where they make that decision is really not a very large step from what they look for.

[58:38]

And so the karmic action there is to say, well, you know, what kind of a turning away from Buddha nature was that, as compared to this other action? this small thing where the person is really right there. So that's kind of how I'm hearing the stories, and I'm not sure if that's what you're meaning of. Well, you kind of lost me a little bit there. I was following you in the sense of that you could make You could think about an action that would, in the outside world, be a small digression and a small sin. You could think about that, but know that in yourself it was a big turning away. We have the expression, you know, a hair's breadth deviation is like the distance between heaven and earth. In your mind, the slightest deviation, you could put all evil in there. But temporarily it could just be like a little evil. You know, the one you could be thinking about the time could be a small infraction, but basically in that space where you say, well, here's the truth and I don't care, you can fit anything in there.

[59:45]

Mass murder or, you know, talking mean to somebody, calling somebody a frog or a dog could fit in there too. But the results, the space it fits in is the space of turning away from the truth. And so the consequences could be great. However, here is a difference between thinking of killing somebody and calling them a dog. So it doesn't make a difference. But the main thing is, as you said, you turn away from the truth. Now, are you saying something more than that? The added thing was the idea of a large magnitude, actually in the conventional sense, of something where people say, well, that's really bad. that the actual turn that might have happened at that moment for us to get that happened might have been... Not that different from the turning of a small thing. Yeah, they weren't very close to... Right. ...seeing... Right. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying, yes. That's why we should be careful of the little things, because the little things are very close to the big things. It's just a matter of turning the dial. You're basically yourself on the right course to destruction.

[60:49]

and then it's just a question of turning the dial farther. When there's the slightest, as long as there's the slightest bit of duality in our mind, we're sitting ducks. So we should be very careful. But if you say, well, I have some duality or I have some delusion in my mind, and I do actually, to some extent, believe I'm separate from other people, and I do actually care about myself a little bit more, at least a little bit more than somebody. There are some people who I care about kind of like equal to myself. It's almost like I understand that they're me. But my understanding, I don't quite understand that everybody's me. So that kind of like, I do think I'm a little bit more important than somebody. So I still have some duality in my mind. So because my heart is not completely purified, I have to be really careful. Like that sign I said, if you can't be good, and I mean, be good, then be careful. So I have to admit, if I look at my heart, I'm not like kind of ready to give everybody everything. So I have to be careful. Not only that, but I have to be careful because I got some real big trouble coming to me.

[61:51]

I got some big stuff coming. So I got to be, you know, really careful. So when that comes, I don't like blow it. You know, now I have this thing in my face, but then I reject it and say, this is not for me. I don't deserve this. This is cause, in fact, doesn't really work. Blah, blah, blah. Then we even get worse. So, yes. Gee, I don't know. I have the same question, but I would phrase it in a different way. What I raised my hand earlier was, if you're saying that the cause and effect is basically in the conventional world of the climacy of mind, so that if I know something bad that I don't think it's bad, like let's say, you know, like I kill somebody or I steal something, but I don't really think it's a bad thing. Well, how could you kill someone and not think it was a bad thing? Well, you know, some people do negative things, and they don't really think they're doing such a bad thing. Okay, so unconscious counts.

[62:54]

Okay. If you kill somebody or something, and in your heart, your attitude is, this thing is worthless. This thing is not important. This is not a sacred thing. This is not a worthwhile thing. This is a piece of trash. You might not be conscious of that feeling, but that's there. In Buddhism, by the way, in terms of ranking unwholesomeness, unwholesomeness is the reverse of premeditated murder. Unwholesomeness that you're unconscious of is darker than unwholesomeness you are conscious of. And vice versa, wholesomeness in this dualistic world, wholesomeness that you're unconscious of being wholesome and that you do anyway, is better than wholesomeness that you think is good. In other words, if you have the feeling, I want to help people, but you don't even know you have it and just go and act on that, that's better good than to have that same feeling and be aware of it. Just let me just finish that. And that is, if you kill with some disrespect of things, and I say that killing is only possible

[64:01]

I'll take it back. Killing almost always happens when you disrespect some life form. The only exception of that would be in a rare case, and there are the Buddhist examples of this, that you kill someone in order to protect that person. But your impulse is total compassion. It's not an unwholesome, the premise of mind is the mind is a kind and loving mind that could sometime do something such that the person would die. But that's not really killing. So there's room for youth in Asia. If really... You have to be kind of a Buddha to know about that kind of thing, but there are cases of beings who are either enlightened or going to be enlightened soon who have done such things from compassion. I have never, myself, ever killed anything out of compassion. What? And I've never seen anybody do it in my whole life, and I've never heard about it ever happening, ever. You know, firsthand. I've heard of stories of Buddha doing it, but I've never actually witnessed that someone killed something and that it was really coming from compassion.

[65:06]

Yeah, let's get into it, okay? Let me finish. It's sort of something you're saying, in addition to the primacy of my conscious mind and how I'm thinking of it, that there is sort of like some actual kind of, I don't know if I want to call it ultimate, but some kind of like material laws, cause and effect that are operating that there really is some kind of standard that something is good and something is not good to do. I think there's a conventional standard. There's a convention. There are conventions, which we work out together, primarily with language. We make conventions. And in those realms, that's all you've got to work with is convention. In those realms, you try to as much as possible harmonize with what is conventionally considered to be good and if you have a problem with it then you negotiate with convention you call a convention you get people together to say i would like to renegotiate what is good in this case but you don't act on it before you before you harmonize with the current convention because you might be wrong they might convince you that the current standards of not killing as bad is good but if you thought it was good you'd have to call a convention otherwise you wouldn't harmonize so are you kind of saying that

[66:21]

someone like a sociopath or someone who may not think that what they're doing is wrong consciously would because of conventional reality and cultural messages they have have an unconscious mind that was absorbing the convention and so that they even though they did it unconsciously they would like I think that sociopaths I think that although they may not be very aware of it they pretty much in their mind do not think cause and effect is a big deal they don't care That you could get out of them. They do not care. They do not care about it. And they would say that. They wouldn't necessarily say, I wanted to hurt the person. They said, I just thought it'd be fun to whack them over the head. It's like a nice billiard ball. Boom. They didn't know empathy. So there wasn't something like, oh, I'm going to do something cruel to them. They just don't care about cause and effect. I think that you can get out of them. And that's the worst way, you know, that's worse in a way than feel will, because you're not only having feel will towards one person, you're having feel will toward reality.

[67:24]

So, yes. Dependent core arising is that all things depend on other things, that nothing exists independent of another. Cause and effect could apply to a person who still is in the realm of thinking that they're independent and can act independently. In other words, when you don't understand dependent core arising, you could still be committed to cause and effect, but others don't depend on the horizon, still thinking that you're an independent actor, that you can do things by yourself against other people or for other people that are not you. Then in that realm, things go a certain way, according to conventions of thought. There's a certain lawfulness in the way the mind works in relationship to words. Now to observe how that comes to be and how it's empty is depend on the horizon. But you can't actually see that clearly and honestly if you don't also recognize the conventionality which you're meditating on.

[68:30]

Just like you can't really study your breath if you don't pay attention to it. And you have to admit what you think your breath is in order to be aware of it. You can't be aware of the breath indefinitely. It doesn't count. It's more like faith to study cause and effect, to try to accord with it and modify your actions in correspondence to the laws of cause and effect is a foundation for the practice of studying dependent core rising. It's not by itself sufficient. You have to also study dependent core rising based on that. But they sound similar because they're both talking about causation. Causation, it turns out, is the fundamental thing to look at in life. First of all, you align yourself and harmonize with yourself and settle into it. That's called practicing virtue. Then you study it and realize it's true nature, namely that dependent co-arising also dependently co-arises, so it's empty. And emptiness is what you see when you practice and study dependent co-arising, and it's also empty because it only co-arises.

[69:37]

So you actually enter into the actuality of our existence, and then you're totally in harmony. But you have to... do the hard work of settling into the basically disharmonious situation of having others in your life, of having conceptions in your mind. So there's, I think there's a burning question about what about pets? And I'm not going to stop. Yeah. So I was once invited to do a little euthanasia. by one of our dear friends here. A deer here had a compound fracture. And this person thought that the deer was suffering and wanted the deer to not suffer anymore by doing something to the deer so that the deer would not be alive anymore. This was a long time ago, but I was already a priest. That's why the person wanted me to come and witness this process, which was, I think, in a spirit of euthanasia.

[70:40]

So I went there and I watched this happen. And if anybody ever wants to hear the great details, I'll tell you. But I'll tell you, what I saw, I will never ever do that again in this lifetime anyway. I may be born a monster in the next lifetime and do all that stuff all the time. But this lifetime, I will never do anything to a living being to encourage it to die. Never. I won't. I saw that. It was horrible. It was terrible. And it was based on trying to relieve this animal's suffering and it just caused it more suffering. And more and more and more. It was horrible. It was just based on the idea that this animal wanted to die or based on this idea of animal suffering. But if I really cared about this suffering animal, I could have gone down there, put a fence around it, and got a series of people to sit with it until it decided to die. But I didn't care enough to do that, he didn't care enough, Greengolf didn't care enough to do that. So, since it was suffering, I didn't want to watch it suffer anymore, he didn't want to watch it suffer anymore, so... Put yourself out of your misery.

[71:49]

Put myself out of my misery. The deer didn't say, please kill me. And actually, when I got there, I was a little surprised how calm the deer was. And also, the deer had maggots around the compound fracture, which is kind of disgusting, but maggots keep it clean. So you think, well, what's the problem here? The deer seems to be calm, being protected from infection. What's the problem? Well, maybe raccoons will come and rip it to shreds at night, and that would be hard. Well, if that's what you're concerned about, protect it from the raccoons, which would be a lot more work than what we did. than what I witnessed. A lot more work, but not nearly as terrible and much kinder. And then the deer can decide when the deer wants to live, but to traumatize someone so they'll say, okay, it's been bad, but now if you can do this to me, okay, okay, okay, okay, I'll die. I don't see traumatizing people or traumatizing their system to help them decide to die. That's what euthanasia sometimes is, I think, is you give them some chemical and their system goes, whoa, this is no good, I'm getting out of here. Before that, they thought, well, it's really bad, but I'm not so sure, maybe, who knows.

[72:52]

They're deciding to live. When beings want to die, they can do it. They will find the way. It's up to them. And if you think it's time to go, well, my sister, I had a dog, you know, and my sister told me that if I didn't take the dog, the dog would die. So I took the dog. And that dog was a great blessing to me. That dog taught me a great deal. That dog taught me that something big and black with huge teeth and big muscles and male could be a total sweetheart. And I kind of a little bit extrapolated that to being besides dogs. It was a big help to me in my relationship with men. It helped me see that men, big, black, powerful men can be totally sweet. Also that dog taught me how to relate to a living being completely on an emotional basis with no reasoning possible. Because you couldn't reason with the dog. This dog was like running the street, gonna feed somebody or something.

[73:54]

If you yelled at him, he would just totally freak out. The only way to get him to listen to would be say, Eric! Eric! That would get his attention. But if you were harsh to Eric, he'd just get scared to death and he'd just do something really weird, like run into a car or something, or knock a car over. That dog taught me a great deal. And one time I ran away for a little trip to the mountains with Zori, and I thought I lost it, you know, and I was walking through the forest, calling his name, and... It wasn't so much that he would be dead, you know, begotten me. But just, I was so grateful to what he taught me, what he showed me, you know. Anyway, my sister told me that that dog would die if I didn't take it, so I took it, and that was good for me and good for Eric for a while. And then finally, people at Zen Center said, you know, it's not good for you to have this dog. Habits can't have attack dogs. It just doesn't look good for you and your black, rosy, shaved head to be walking around with this big, macho-looking dog, even if he is castrated and sweet.

[75:03]

It's a bad image. So I gave him back to my sister. And that was okay, and I went to visit him a few times. Anyway, I had this great relationship with him, but then Eric got sick. And he got sick, and he's a big dog, you know, so the way he got sick is he couldn't stand up anymore, so he was, like, living in his own stuff, right? So my sister felt bad for Eric, you know, she thought, well, he doesn't want to be living in his own shit, right? So my sister is very good with animals. She raised dogs, and so she made the decision to take him to the vet. And she did it in a very nice way. She, you know... She gave him his favorite things to eat. So while he was, after he got the shot, while he was dying, she was there and he was eating his favorite food. So he died happy, sort of. I myself will not do that as much as possible. I won't do that. I would rather clean up his stuff. That's what I would prefer. And not inject chemicals into him so that he'll get confused and get scared and stuff like that.

[76:08]

Because I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know. But I wouldn't do that. It's very inconvenient to do that way. But I've seen people who have dogs who get very old and it's very inconvenient and they have this And we have these beings, animals or humans, and they're falling apart. They're rotting right before our eyes. And we keep loving them. And because we love them, they keep living. Because they love to be loved. Like we have this little boy in our community named... What's his name? His name is... I forgot his name, sorry. His last name is Sawyer. Jonathan. Jonathan had a real hard time from the time he was born. A real hard time. Most people would have checked out. in the face of Jonathan's difficulties. And Jonathan really had a hard time. And Sabrina has a hard time, too. She had a real hard time from the time she was born. But Jonathan and Sabrina got so much love, they've stuck it out. They got so much love, they say, well, you know, okay, okay.

[77:08]

It's so great to be loved, you know, that they put up with all this physical crap. Now Sabrina's having an easier time, but she still has a hard time. But both of them, during certain times, they got real close to like it was real tough. And you could see maybe they're going to check out. But they didn't because the response to that was such tremendous love that they said, okay, okay, okay. But it's very inconvenient to love someone that much. It takes all your time. You can't watch TV or go shopping at that time necessarily. But sometimes you take them shopping with you, which is sometimes a great delight. I'm just saying... That's how I feel. I'm not talking about other people, what they should do. And if I do something other than that, I have not for myself seen any other reason to do that than convenience for me so far. And I could have said to my sister if she talked to me, but she didn't, I could have said, okay, send him back. Would I have done that? I don't know.

[78:09]

Would I have said, don't kill Eric. Send it back to me. I'll clean his poop up. And he might live forever lying in his poop if he got that much love. Because that's what he cared about. That's all he cared about. That's all he wanted. And when he got it, that was it. That wasn't all he liked. He also liked to go running in the forest sometimes. But anyway, so I don't know what you do about your pests or something, but that's what I think, for me, that's what I see. It didn't help that deer at all. Yes? Well, I was present when someone asked a Tibetan ricochet about euthanasia, and he said never not to kill anyone. He said that they or any literature for that reason, the euthanasia, because they had their own heart to reach out. And we don't understand what that could be. If somebody says to me, would you help me kill myself, I would say...

[79:14]

Do it yourself. Just stop breathing. If you really want to die, just don't inhale again. But they do want to inhale. Their body wants to inhale, so they can't. Until at some point, even though the body still wants to inhale, at some point it doesn't. And they have to suffer between now and that time, and so do I. But to make a law, stopping them, that's different. That's interfering in another way. So it's, now how about somebody who's sick and plugging him into a machine to keep him going? I wouldn't necessarily do that either. I wouldn't plug him in. I wouldn't decide, okay, you're going to keep living. So we're going to put this sucrose in you or glucose in you so your body will keep wanting more hair. A body that's getting nutrition wants oxygen to process it because it's painful. But I wouldn't necessarily do that either. If someone wanted to be disconnected from life support system, I might go along with that, if they said so beforehand. It's a little different, I guess. Well, I think sometimes the fact that we can't bear their suffering.

[80:18]

It's very often that that's the case. We can't bear it. Yeah, we don't want to do it. And that's the same, you know, so like this thing about abortion is not letting, this point's been well made, that the people who want to stop people from having the ability to have abortion will not help the person afterwards with the baby. It seems to me if you say you should have this baby and you can't have an abortion, then I'll help you afterwards. Well, if they say that, that's a little different. Or even you just have the baby and we'll take care of the baby even for you. And you can have it back later if you want to. But that's different. But to say, you have the baby and you take care of it, we're not going to help you. Why? I don't go for that. Because you should shut up if you're not going to put up. Don't ask things of other people that you won't do yourself. If you really care about protecting life, well, protect it. Don't ask somebody else to do it for you. Robert?

[81:20]

Well, I don't know, but you've kind of answered this. I have a personal example that really pushed me to love all this. Okay. A dog crossed my path as I was driving my truck in the mouth of the kitten. As I stopped the truck, the kitten was hardly mauled. There was no safety. Hardly mauled. Yes. So I took out my framing camera and went, hey, the kitten was gone. Yes. I feel like I did nothing but good. I feel like that was a good thing. I just can't fight these events. It's not for me to convince. I'm not here to convince you you did something bad. I'm not going to say that. I'm just saying that I don't think I would do that. I think I would take the kitten home and take care of it and let it die if it wanted to. You are much more skillful than this other person with the deer. Apparently you did. It was like that. But in this case, it wasn't like that. I thought it was going to be like that, but it wasn't like that.

[82:23]

But I would do differently, but I'm not saying what you did. And I do feel that you were coming from wanting to help the kitten. That was your motivation. But that was our motivation with the deer, too. But it wasn't correct. It was a mistake. We made a mistake. All of us agreed. And although he had to ask, I witnessed it. So I don't say I wanted to even mention it. I'm equally responsive. So anyway, this kind of care for these kinds of details is not the same as studying dependent core rising, but it is the foundation of seeing dependent core rising. It's the practice of all virtues and being gentle and harmonious with the conventional situation that you live in, with your conventional present understanding of good.

[83:27]

With that situation, you do your best to harmonize with good and to not get involved in evil. And if you can do that, then you can see the dependent core rising of good and evil. and be free of the duality and enter into the dharma of good and the dharma of evil. Dharma is everywhere. Dharma doesn't stop at evil. There's a dharma in evil. You can be liberated by meditating on evil, but not if you're indulging or denying it or not being careful about it. So, anyway, there's a lot more to talk about here. I appreciate you listening to this difficult aspect of the teaching of the law of cause and effect. I just want to say one more thing, and that is that Suzuki Roshi said to me, actually, that his karma was not so good.

[84:46]

He had a lot of problems in his life. And he said that was because of his karma, his past karma was not so good. But he was very much careful about, in this lifetime, cause and effect, and the way he dealt with his difficulty and his pain and his suffering and his hardships was great Dharma teaching. So even though we have difficulty, which may be due to past karma, the way we perceive it and work with it is what really counts. So that's really the teaching that I saw from him. Amen. Amen. Amen.

[85:40]

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