But at the time, you know, to actually dissociate, you kind of were there, but not really. You put it in the right place, you meant to do it, but you hardly remember doing it. One of the first stories that turned me to Zen was a story about a monk who had trained for a number of years at Zen. And then he came to visit his teacher one night. It was a rainy night. And he came into his teacher's temple, and he took off his raincoat and his rain shoes and left them in the entryway. And then he went to see his teacher, and the teacher said, which side of the entryway did you put your raincoat, and which side of the entryway did you put your shoes? And he couldn't remember. So then he stayed with his teacher for six more years of study. So when we put our raincoat down and we put the cup down, that's an important act.

[01:07]

Was there karma there? Did I do it? Did I mean to do it? How did I do it? And if you should happen to kill something, you would be there when you did it. It is good. But it's better if you're there than if you're not. When you have lunch, you can say, well, it isn't necessarily good or bad to have lunch. It's kind of neutral, maybe, a lot of the times. But it is good to be there and to recognize that you did have lunch. And to what extent you did that, it's good to know that you were there. It's an unwholesome act. It's better if you're more conscious. It's worse if you're not. And sometimes they say... I won't be able to do that right now. Yes? Well, last morning, we were sitting there having a question about it, and Bob said that even big pilot is a whole for that.

[02:12]

So, usually I give a 10. I think there's still a few flies in my cut, because I thought we were telling that there could be a big virus. And then, I found nothing to kill them. I just went with this by then. Yes? This act is kind of automatic. Oh, I see. I would say karmic, but not very conscious. Unconscious wholesome, yeah. I think we can do a lot of wholesome things unconsciously. Unconsciously means... means there is the impulse, there was the impulse, now it's become fairly automatic, how do you even think about it?

[03:30]

A lot of things we do, a lot of us drive successfully, unconscious. We get from one place to the other and we can't remember any turn of gear shift or anything, and yet we make the trip, we perform all the services properly and kindly, and don't get in an accident or hurt anything, and we're like very little there. It's still fairly wholesome. Now, would it be more wholesome if we were watching it? I would say, yeah, and not only that, but because we're paying more attention to it and it's more wholesome, it goes with the opportunity to pay more attention to it. So paying more attention to it is more wholesome, plus also it offers the opportunity to pay attention to it, and paying attention to it is not even wholesome. It's just awareness. But that awareness may increase the quality of the wholesome karma, which then feeds more awareness.

[04:34]

So the awareness and wholesomeness feed on each other. And similarly, the unwholesomeness and awareness, the unwholesomeness doesn't feed the awareness, but the awareness tends to help you become free of the unwholesomeness. So awareness of wholesome karma tends to make the wholesome karma more wholesome. And awareness of unwholesome karma doesn't make the unwholesome karma more wholesome. But missing the opportunity to be aware of unwholesome karma makes the unwholesome karma in a sense worse. Not really, but you're not learning anything from it. At least in the other case, you might be learning something from it. So like you, there was a time in the ancient past, I understand, when you used to kill flies. But because you were aware that you were killing them, you learned that it might be good to abandon that habit.

[05:37]

But if you hadn't been aware that you were killing them, it might have been difficult for you to abandon the habit. Right? Well, I mean, yeah, I think so. But because you were aware, because you had the good karma other things that you had from not killing meat, you were able to be aware that you are still killing flies. So then you may devour. So then you start to practice. Then if you didn't practice, you didn't continue your mindfulness, so you're not learning as much as you could from that experience of not killing flies. Could you ever be aware of the mouth sounds Could you? Yes, that's called enlightenment. Enlightenment is the awareness of non-carnate situation. In other words, enlightenment is awareness of how everybody is cooperating to create our activity. It's the awareness of how you are not the determiner, the sole determiner of your action.

[06:41]

But everybody's coming together to nod your head. Yes. So now I'm being confused, but I understand this example, that when you're aware of it, it helps you understand by being more aware, always beneficial to be more aware. But then earlier you mentioned this thing that if you change your mind and decide that it's bad just after you do it or something, then it becomes worse. It's actually... You know, if it's kind of neutral karma or, I mean, conscious karma or something, then it's not that bad an effect. But if you suddenly realize that it's bad, or... You suddenly call it bad. Yeah, or call it bad. Yeah. Then it becomes bad. It becomes worse. It becomes worse. You say, does it become worse?

[07:45]

Um... Does it become worse? Seems like it might, because, well, I don't know, that's how I thought it would be said. Yeah, I mean, if you think you're doing bad karma in a way, you're right. So like, because you're running your mind through that track, I did bad karma. So it's a general... It's a judgment, and it's based on something, and when you use your mind, when you do things that cause you to think that it's bad, then that's probably, that there's something to that. Now, then you watch and see, then you watch and see, is what I think is bad, does it lead to unwholesome results? And sometimes you might see that the fact that you think it's bad leads to some unwholesome results. So like some other times, you might think it's bad, and it leads to even more severe unwholesome results, and you might see the difference between the two.

[08:56]

So in Linnea's example, she originally was moving with the intention to take care of her health so she wouldn't hurt herself and not be able to sit at all. Then she said this thing of, you know, maybe I'm like, maybe I did something bad, maybe I'm being lazy or tricking myself or something. So then she watches and sees. She says, well, I moved and I didn't hurt myself, but then I also felt kind of lousy and didn't want to subside anymore because I get into this, you know, judgmental trip on myself. So that's kind of like that. So you might see, but actually the movie was kind of good because I'm not wrecked, but that judgment on myself, that wasn't so skillful because, you know, if I had moved and just let it go like that, I would have been ready for the next period, but now I got this kind of ghosty, yucky feeling about it. It wasn't really necessary. So maybe next time I won't badmouth myself after I do something which is pretty reasonable. Something like that. This is like, you know, your own mental chemistry. You can poison yourself unnecessarily.

[09:57]

On the other hand, you could tell the story the other way that she saw something which might be unhealthy and then in that case to say, well, there's an unhealthy thing and I'm going to do it. and it is unhealthy, then that judgment of it might have been all the clearer for the experiment, you know, if she's aware. I think it's unhealthy, and now I'm going to condemn it as unhealthy, and then watch and say, sure enough, when I do that, it really is bad. And so that's how bad works. Bad, you know, is it bad is as bad does? How do they say that? Is there some expression like that? Good is as good does? Yeah. Pretty is what pretty does. Bad made look bad does. So you watch how it works. This is the relative world. This is how the relative world works. So we're trying to understand how it works. So the Neo story could have been broken up in two parts, but it wasn't. It's kind of complicated. So there's all these complexities. You need to learn how it all works.

[11:00]

And it can get kind of confusing, but the more you study, Well, when I'm sitting, like Linnea was saying, she finds herself becoming terribly uncomfortable and she can't just ignore it. Maybe she's really stretching something. My biggest problem with moving is not so much that I'm in pain, but I'm very conscious that I'm going to disturb people around me. And so I may decide I have to move my foot because it's killing me and I'm going to start screaming. But then I might see out of the corner of my eyes briefly that people around me did more of this and perhaps it bothered them. And that makes me think maybe it was bad to distort them. But it was good for me to move my foot. Right. Does that mean it's their negative reaction to my movement, my karma, or their... Their negative reaction to your movement is their karma. So I should drop the guilt.

[12:02]

I'm not sure you drop the guilt. People's negative thoughts, negative karmic thoughts about what we do, that's their responsibility. But still, if you're in a meditation hall where the norm is not to move, I think it is part of wholesome action is to consider that if you do things in a certain group, there will be consequences. That's part of the way to conduct yourself in the world, in a way that actually will promote your awareness of what you're doing, to take that into account. So, to move into Zendo with a sense of that decorum, if you thought, first of all, it's good for my health, and these people probably, some of them, probably like me to move so as to not hurt myself. But also, they probably would also appreciate if I moved in such a way that signaled them that I was respecting the decorum.

[13:07]

So if someone comes in late or leaves early, There's a way of doing that that signals the other people, I'm moving at an unusual time, but I respect the decorum of the room. And you can change your posture in a way that says, I'm moving, but I'm not doing this irrespective of the effect on you. So in that case, you might move. very slowly. So slowly that they might not even notice. It's not so much that you're hiding, but that you're moving in a way that says, I understand that the quorum of the room is to be still, so I'm moving very slowly. This is an act of respect to the zendo and to you. So you move very slowly. So that could be half sneaky and half respecting the other people.

[14:30]

Or 100% respecting the other people and not at all being trying to hide it, but just saying, I need to move, I'm deciding I'm going to move, but I respected the quorum and I don't want to bother them. They're watching you like a hawk. Now, is this a respectful move? Yeah, it's pretty good. I just remember once a guy sitting next to me in meditation, popping his knuckles. It was when we were sitting upstairs in the Cloud Hall. It was one of your lectures years ago. It was so crowded. But this guy was just, I don't know, silent, except for pop, pop, pop. He was just sitting there. What is he doing? Oh, my God. Pop. He just kept doing it. It was just like... I said, don't do that. My knees don't crack when I move, because I move not as slowly as you. Here's a practice of this. That was the slowest moving thing.

[15:31]

Yeah, so you move in the spirit of not moving. So people feel, like I say, if you have to leave, you come late, you move to the hall to get to your seat very quietly. Now what some people do is because they're late, they think, oh, I'm late and I'm going to bother people, so they rush to their seat. And you can feel they're rushing because they don't want to bother people, but actually they're bothering some more. So you gradually learn that you can convey the sense of, OK, I'm late, or I'm coming in late, but I don't want to bother you. But I'm also not going to rush to shorten the amount of pain I feel going through this very highly conscious space. I'm not going to rush through it just to end my pain. And the people feel that and they respect it.

[16:35]

And again, they hardly notice it. Once they feel you're worried about it, they don't have to worry about it. But if you come in the room and you're not paying attention to how you're moving, everybody else in the room, not everybody, but a lot of the other people in the room are worried. Who is this that's coming in here and not knowing that we're all sitting there? They'll get nervous. But if you're kind of like, okay. I'm going to move into this space. I'm going to take responsibility for every step so I don't bother these people and make the least possible noise. They feel your concern by the movement of your body, by the sound you make, but they feel your concern. And they say, okay, this person's taking care of their practice to not bother you. And that's the example of you are aware of them and you're taking care of yourself. If you're sick and then you have to leave, sometimes if you have to vomit or something, you have to move out fast, but then you convey this thing, you give out this message, I'm going to vomit.

[17:41]

So that's why I'm moving faster than usual. I can't go slowly, otherwise I won't make it. So you have this way of self-invent, you know, that it's vomit time. Then they realize, oh, this person's not just fooling around. They're trying to protect us from the uncontrollable thing. So they go, oh, good, good, please. You can rush in this case. We don't want you to stay around. And there's also the coughing people. There's a certain kind of cough everybody else in the Zen nook can feel. And they watch it a little. Because, you know, they can feel you holding back the cough and everybody in the Zen nook is going, Cough, cough. So they can feel you trying to stop, and then they can feel you sort of saying, I'm getting out of here, and they say, fine. The point is that people can feel when you're aware of and concerned for them, and they appreciate that.

[18:42]

But they also want you to take care of yourself. which they sometimes don't know about. So the pain in your knees, pain in your back, people don't know about that necessarily. So you have to take care of that so you don't make the meditation into something so difficult that you can't stand it. So take care of yourself. Take care of yourself inside. Do the right thing for your body and also do it in a way that takes care of everybody else. Do both. That's called good karma. Good karma is when you balance these two and take care of both of them at the same time. All wholesome states have these two qualities of taking care of yourself, being respectful of your needs, and being concerned for others. They have these two qualities. And all unwholesome states are missing those. But some states which are indeterminate have no states that are indeterminate are missing those. If you're missing self-respect and decorums, if you're not taking care of yourself and don't care what happens to you and have no standards for yourself and don't care what other people think of you and don't care what happens to them, if those are missing, definitely, automatically, that defines an unwholesome state.

[19:59]

In other words, you're saying, basically you're saying, karma doesn't have effects. I don't care about karma causing effects. That's what you're saying. But if you do have them, that doesn't for sure mean it's a wholesome state. Because you can have these qualities and then not take care of yourself. Like you can say, well, you know, here I am, you know, I kind of got this problem, you know, maybe I should move, and then you don't do it and hurt yourself. Or you say, well, yeah, I kind of care what they say, and then you're just packing away. It looks like you don't. So it's not just that you have these qualities, it's that you manage to act in accordance. But you can have them and violate them while you can have them and not accord with them. So an indeterminate state could have them, and a wholesome state could have them. Unwholesome states usually don't. But if you don't have them at all, you can be sure it's a wholesome state.

[21:01]

Because they're two of the main factors that you use to guide yourself. And whatever you think is wholesome, there are things you use to do whatever you think is wholesome to the best of your ability. Yes? I was just going to ask, you're describing that right intention, that right action. It's another way to look at it. You're acting in accordance with the properness of action, properness of intention. Don't you... than for wholesome action? Well, I said earlier, you know, that wholesome karma is not the same as right action. I said that earlier. And strictly speaking, I still can say what I said, namely that wholesome action is not necessarily right action. Because you can do wholesome things

[22:03]

without reconciliation. Whereas, huh? That's why I said both intention and action. I missed what you said. That's why I included both intention and action. What's guiding you on the course of that? I understand what you mean by action guiding you towards an action. What do you mean by batting into it in action? I get the contention you don't need batting into it in action. Yeah, I think that's the way it is. You were describing a set of go-bys or prescriptions that force an action. Yes, you do. It sounded to me very much like you can follow it. What action? What's your action? Your actions would be wholesome, but in a sense, I'm saying, they might not be wholesome karma.

[23:15]

Because in right action, you have not only loving kindness and harmlessness. Take it back. I wouldn't even say you can do wholesome karma without without loving kindness. I would say you can do a wholesome action without loving kindness. You could do things for yourself to benefit yourself where loving kindness might not be operating. I think it would be fairly unlikely that you'd do a wholesome thing which was cruel. Usually that's not wholesome. through it, that you do cruelty. But you might do something that wasn't particularly loving, kindness, but there might not be an ill will, but there might be some attachment or self-concern that you do something which is good for you. So that would be good karma, but it wouldn't necessarily have loving kindness, kindnessness, and it wouldn't necessarily have renunciation.

[24:24]

Now, If you practice right action, right action might look, under some circumstance, like unwholesome karma. It's possible that someone would see right action and say, that looks unwholesome. It's pretty unlikely that you would think it was unwholesome. Very unlikely, I think, that you'd think it was unwholesome if you had loving-kindness, calmlessness. If you were intent, the shape of your mind was loving-kindness, calmlessness, and detachment. I don't think if you were going to evaluate the kind of quality, you would say it was unwholesome. I think you would say, it's good, but it wouldn't necessarily be calm. And I thought, really, it wouldn't be calm. Because if there was really well-developed renunciation, you would have renounced yourself, too. Yeah, even the first time you might have kind of almost done it from the time being, but down deeper.

[25:28]

So I think it's possible, anyway, to do fairly wholesome karma that hasn't quite reached the state of right action. whereas right action might even look under some circumstances to somebody as ungraceful. I don't know how far you can go on that, but there are some extreme examples. There's many Zen stories where the teacher does these rough things, but the point is that they're acting out of loving-kindness, calmlessness, and detachment, and attacking in a way that's extremely beneficial to the recipient of their... kind of rough action. And in case I tell you, you might ask the teacher to look into her heart and see if was that right action. And then you might have another one of these stories following that question.

[26:34]

That one might be more. You might say, well, yes, I checked and I found that that was okay. And you can have no interaction with him. He'll be more conventional and won't get his books. So, how are you doing? So, anyway, we're talking about karma and so on and so forth. And this talking about karma is hopefully part of what helps us in our meditation upon karma. I hope this helps you meditate upon it. And maybe now, we have a little time before we go to meditation, maybe now, instead of waiting until tonight, I might ask you a little bit about how, you know, what is the...

[27:40]

What are the conditions for the arising of karma? Now, we've been talking about what karma is, right? How does karma happen? In other words, what dependent core arising of karma? It's a few confusing. Yeah, so part of what's necessary for karma is some delusion, some delusion. What else? Usually it's part of the factors giving rise to karma. Huh? Ignorance and delusion. Yeah. That's one of the prime examples of what we need here.

[28:49]

What? They could be there, but... But we don't need it. I mean, we don't need it for karma. We don't need unwholesome mental states for karma, because there's wholesome mental states, wholesome karmic states, right? So we don't need wholesome or unwholesome as a requirement for karma. Yes? I think that one thing we need with the question of karma, I mean, probably in the classroom, Is it the only prerequisite? No? When you say that something is the only prerequisite for something, Is what you mean there that it's a necessary and sufficient condition?

[30:07]

Is that what you mean? Because, you know, you said there's more things there, right? You have to have some situation. Situation's important in which this occurs, right? So it's not the only thing you need. But you could have a situation in which there's not karma. Now, the situation where there's not karma could still have the belief and self-care. Like, you could be sitting here right now with perfectly healthy, a deeply entrenched belief in the independent existence of yourself, right? And have it not be karma. Like, you could hear a bird chirp. Okay? Here? There's got to be what? There's got to be some, I don't, there's got to be some action, and the action can be a thought form.

[31:08]

Right, so it takes more than just a belief in self, okay? You've got a living creature, you've got a belief in self, okay? That creature can be stimulated, and also the creature can respond to that stimulation, too. Okay? So you've got a living creature, who's got a belief in self, they get stimulated, they respond to the stimulation, but they don't necessarily see it as an action. Okay? So, first of all, you have a living creature with a belief in self, an ignorant living being, belief in self, they're stimulated, and the stimulation does not necessarily lead to a response. That's not karma. Okay? Other situations are stimulated and there's a response. Grace, watch this one. Ooh.

[32:13]

You know that wasn't true. And there's a response. That response was not her. Okay? Grace, you okay? Yeah. What's the matter? Well, I'm thinking about this. Yeah, that's not karma. You've got a response. So first of all, again, number one, you've got a living being who's got all the equipment for karma ready to go. They hear something. That's not karma. They're stimulated. No response. That's not karma. Then you have the same situation. They're stimulated and there's a response, but the response has no volition in it. It's not karma. So it takes more than just the belief in independent self. It takes belief in independent self plus volition. Now what about volition without the independent self? OK?

[33:16]

No. So you need a person. You need some stimulation. You need belief in self. and you need volitional response to make karma. And the volitional response can be conscious or unconscious. If it's conscious, it might not go into karma. If it's conscious, it might Living being, stimulation, response, response is volitional, and belief in karma, belief in the self, you've got karma. If it's conscious, and if it's unconscious, you also have it. You have karma. But if you have living being, belief in self, stimulus and response, but the response isn't volitional, it's not permanent.

[34:29]

And if you have living being, stimulus, response, volitional response, but no self, it's not permanent. In that case, the volition is a volition in a field of dependent co-arising. So at the same time there's this shape of the consciousness. The shape is a shape of attachment, wisdom, loving-kindness, harmlessness, and understanding dependent co-arising. No karma. Just pure awareness which allows action in the being. You also have to have some concept of good and bad. You have to have some concept of good and bad? You don't have to have that on wholesome coming.

[35:31]

You don't have to. You don't have to get into, like, you know, that there's right and wrong in order to want to hurt somebody without the concept that, you know, that's bad. You can do it and it counts. Huh? Well, you know, that it would, oh, I see. The idea that this would do damage to them. You'd need that in order to do damage of a comic type, yeah. Once you refrain from it, you'd have to understand that there was some option to that and take that option. What's an example of unconscious industrial sparks? Well, like if you're drowning, you know, you fight to save. Unconscious life force drives that you don't know you have that are going on all the time. They're based on a misunderstanding of your nature.

[36:37]

They're still based on a kind of animal independence understanding, unconscious, primitive idea of independent existence. You don't know about that a lot of times, but that's driving us a good share of the time, unconsciously. So if you were in a crisis situation, unconsciously acted to save yourself. And, you know, more so if you're unconsciously acting to save yourself, then it may look like something else. I think the impasse is foolish, more than wholesome. I think that's right. I was just wondering if when you put a nail up along this kind of gasp, like when you put out, and then you check it. Do I say out? Or whatever, you know, a kind of exclamation. I don't think I said out. Oh, oh, ooh. And a bunch of us gasped kind of at the start of your thing. Did that kind of? With what, your gasp? Uh-huh.

[37:39]

Uh, I think, you know, it might not have been. It's possible that it wasn't. Linda? I didn't understand your response to, um, this, uh, whether or not you knew. I've got five things now that you haven't, um, Yeah, I think for neutral karma you would need it. So maybe for wholesome, non-wholesome karma you'd need them, but not for neutral karma. So certain kind of functions of our life are not necessarily wholesome or unwholesome. And for those, you wouldn't need big and bad to operate that way. Like, you know, you can take examples of young children who do things which aren't really wholesome or unwholesome.

[38:44]

They don't yet have those concepts, and yet they're still operating, you might say, karmically, I don't know if they can do that, but... If you take any one way from it... Then I would say that the evolutionary capacity of karma is not functioning at that time. In other words, the evolutionary power of your action, if you take away some of these elements, drops away. In other words, whatever state of evolution you're at is maintained. So if you are ignorant of your true nature and you are suffering and you're functioning at a level where there's no volition, then your actions leave you sort of in status quo. If you have some understanding, your understanding pretty much stays the same.

[39:46]

If you have a lot of understanding, you understand pretty well how things go. Nothing much happens when you do these non-karmic activities. If you do unwholesome karma, you devolve. You become more submerged in belief in self as an independent being. You do wholesome karma, you evolve. You become a little bit more awake. You're still, however, entrenching yourself in that bad habit But you're increasing your options of overcoming it by giving it some cover. You're getting a spiritual bonus from that kind of act that you can cash in on meditation practice, which would eventually liberate you from this delusion. So for example, There's a kind of karma you can do which is actually very excellent karma, which can project you into a very high scope of worldly experience.

[41:01]

There's certain very, very lofty trances you can get into. And to get in those trances is, in some sense, the best is the fruit of some of the highest quality karma. It's very pleasant up there. It's like the best possible vacation. But when you're in that state, you don't evolve at all. Even though that state is like a really nice state to be in. And it's a result of very good karma, in a way. Among karmas, the karma that gets you into this very lofty state of bliss And it's a bliss like beyond bliss. But it doesn't address your basic confusion and ignorance. And if you're ignorant when you go into that trance, when you come out, you're just as ignorant as when you went in, but a little older.

[42:05]

Not a lot older, because it's so restful. You get in, you get in, thinking that you got in the trance, and when you come out, you think you are in the trance. But you can't work on your delusion in the trance. Just like, you know, I would even say this, this is a little bit tricky, but when you hear a bird, and you just receive the sound of the bird, I mean... I'm proposing and kind of horrible to say, but it's hard to do spiritual work just when you're hearing the bird. Because you miss a chance to meditate on karma because you're not doing any karma. So it's a little vacation in the swamp of karma when you hear the bird. But that's the way it goes, folks. We can't, in some sense, evolve spiritually all the time.

[43:09]

But also you can't devolve all the time either. So this is spaces in your evolution and decay. It's spaces in your spiritual elevation and descent, which are just simply taking in data to work on. The place you do your work is when you're doing karma. That's where you work and where you can work. And if you don't work when you're doing karma, you get more entrenched in it. If you do work when you're doing karma, you get more awake. So karma is the time when we get in trouble. Karma is the time when we work towards being free. It's right when our delusion is activated that we have a chance to get worse or better. When our delusion is activated, that's swell, you know, I'm not criticizing you for not being deluded for a second, but it's just on hold.

[44:14]

So, yeah, like Linda was talking about, after the koan class, she's non-deluded for like ten minutes or something. Well, fine, you know. Hey, what am I to say? Enjoy non-delusion for a little while. It's okay. But on the other side, too bad. Just ten minutes of suffering. You could have been really meditating all day. Oh my God, look what I'm doing. Anyway, that's the way it is. In some sense, we can't be working all the time because we're not really acting out our delusions all the time. So anyway, these are the conditions for karma, right? This is the dependent core arising for karma. Stimulation, basic delusion, and motivation. And motivation without basic delusion is not karma, it is enlightened activity.

[45:22]

What did I just say? Yeah. So when there's not delusion, and you have motivation, what's your motivation? Loving kindness, harmlessness, compassion, working incessantly and wholeheartedly for the welfare of all beings, bringing dharma to every occasion, totally giving all your love and detachment and wisdom. That's the kind of motivation that's there when there's no delusion. But it's not karmic. And again, it might look like karma. You might be sweating away there, you know, working with beings, but it's, you know, inside, you know, the Buddha calculator is no karma's opinion. Huh? The Buddha-meter, it's like... is enlightenment. Enlightenment is spreading. Light's spreading out to beings from this kind of activity.

[46:26]

So there is activity. Enlightenment does have activity. It's just that enlightenment activity is not karma. We have to study karma in order for the activity of our life to turn into enlightened activity. But, you know, it's hard to study karma. Isn't it? It's hard because it's got all this illusion in it. It's delusion, you know, soaked, delusion-based. Not that easy to look at this deluded process. But if we understand it, that's what a Buddha is. A Buddha is someone who understands delusion, therefore, and karma. Buddhas, that's what they study, that's what they understand. And then when you understand delusion and karma, then the activity of your life It's this enlightened activity which is not karma. So now we've studied something about the nature of karma, and you have some experience with that.

[47:32]

And I hope you just continue through the week and for the rest of your life to have this right view, which is you not only accept that there is such a thing as karma and that it has results, but you watch it and you see its results. You study karma. And what else? You study results. And what else? It's the same thing. And you study who gets the results. That's the beginning. It's the nature of karma, the retribution, and who gets it. Because who gets it is the core of the delusion. The one that generates it and the one that receives it, that's where the self-delusion is. So maybe tonight we can start looking at the results.

[48:40]

And then later we'll look at who gets it, what gets it, where it gets it, how it gets it, when it gets it. Okay. Now, anything else? We have about, there's about 25 minutes before meditation. We can stop now if you'd like, or if there's some burning questions, we can bring them up. Yes? Would I say my dream is karmic action? Not necessarily. Not necessarily. Because you can dream that something's happening to you. But you could dream that someone brings you a big pink vase. And that wouldn't necessarily be a karmic vision.

[49:42]

But I think your unconscious delusions could act out in a dream. But again, even if it is karma in a dream, the nice thing about dreams is that sometimes the dream is showing you some of your unconscious karmic activity. But it's not intentional. What? It's not intentional. No, it could be non-intentional. I mean, the dream could be showing you intentional or non-intentional. It could be revealing to you some of the workings of your karma, which you usually don't see. It could be telling you something that actually is driving you, but you haven't recognized. It kind of helps you study your karma. Exactly. It very much helps you study it. Dreams are very helpful in learning about your karma. But not everything that's revealed in a dream is karma. Some of what you're dealing in a dream is telling you something that you want. Wanting something is not karma. Karma is you want something, and then your mind is inclined towards getting it.

[50:53]

acting upon that desire. The desire is not the same as karma. But sometimes you have a desire and your dream shows it to you, which is sometimes very helpful to understand your mind. The dreams can show you about karma and they can show you about other ingredients in your consciousness which you're having trouble paying attention to. But I think it is possible to do karma in your dream. Think about that some more. But it's also possible, the nice thing about dreams is it's also possible to meditate on your karma which you ordinarily don't meditate on. Now sometimes the karma you're meditating on is symbolic, like you have a dream where you're killing somebody, but the killing is not really that you want to kill somebody, it's telling you something else about yourself. But sometimes in a dream you find out that you do want to kill somebody, but you haven't been able to admit it in your daily life. So sometimes it does show you your karma, but sometimes it shows you, it uses karma as a symbol for something else that's not karma.

[51:57]

And sometimes it tells you things you want, it tells you things you're afraid of. Anyway, dreams are great because there you are, what are you doing? You're sitting there watching, right? You're not actually acting upon the stuff, you're studying. So dreams are part of right view when you start seeing karma in the dream. and really seek karma rather than a symbol of karma. Anything else before we stop? Okay, so let's start. What time do you want to start after dinner? 7.30? Okay. And then we'll talk about, we'll get into the fruits of karma and the fruits of karma In order to understand the principle of karma, we bring up the big, ugly re-break thing. That's the big one.

[52:59]

The Vajrayana starts at 5.15. It's a 35-minute period. The next item here on this first sheet is that action produces a fruit or result or retribution, either in this life or in future life. So a basic, perhaps the most basic principle of this point here is that virtuous actions, virtuous karma

[54:16]

leads to good results, and non-virtuous actions lead to bad results. Or action has the ability to produce results corresponding to the ethical quality of the action. And the law connecting action to results is that unwholesome actions ripen in suffering and wholesome actions in happiness. That's the basic principle of the connection between action and result. And let's see.

[55:47]

The relationship is not a deterministic one. The situation is more complicated than that. Isn't one sense of happiness based on delusion? Yes. Right. Yeah. It could. Yeah. Right. That's right. And, yes? I'm pretty happy.

[57:04]

I'm not going to do anything really good. But if they were to grab me like this, wouldn't that lead to them, you know, Yes, it could lead to them thinking that their happiness is a delusion, but... Pardon? Yes, they might see that their happiness is based on delusion, that's right. They will not see that. So one way to say this in a bigger context would be that given the person's level of understanding,

[58:18]

what that person considers to be populist is connected to what that person considers to be virtuous. Or you might say, virtuous is what leads to happiness. For that person, that level of understanding of happiness. Or vice versa, at that level of understanding of virtuous, That leads to what is for them at that time, happiness. Now, you said if they would examine more deeply, they might find that that happiness and also that virtue, that understanding of virtue, is based on some delusion. Is that what you said? They might find that. They might also find But actually, while we're feeling happy, there is at the same time some subtle anxiety.

[59:37]

For example, they may have a nice home, and good health, and healthy family, and good job, and good reputation, but they might sense that some people actually want to rob them, or some people are jealous of them, or some people want their job, or some people hate them for past actions, or that any moment their children might get sick, so they might feel some anxiety. And their anxiety might be based on their understanding, the root of their anxiety might be based, and usually is based, on their sense of independence from some other being.

[60:42]

And until they're free of that sense of independence, they probably will be at least subtly afflicted and nagged by a sense of anxiety. And the sense of anxiety can drive them to become drug addicts and alcoholics, even though everything looks just fine for them. And if they think they're going worse, they might think that they should work harder or get more education. They've already got good education, maybe, and they're already working hard. And they're getting all the results that they'd expect from working hard, and yet they're still bothered. So now getting richer is not going to take away their anxiety. Maybe they try to get richer, and they notice they're still kind of anxious. As a matter of fact, they might even become more anxious when they get richer, because they're more likely to get robbed.

[61:43]

And the other side, they may know we've moved into a security zone. They have lots of guards and so on. So you might feel somewhat more at ease. But still, having guards all around your house, you do feel some anxiety. So then you want to be left maybe to numb that anxiety with some kind of drugs or something like that. Or you can get busier and move faster so that you don't have a chance to notice the anxiety. Is this helping with you? I don't think so, no. or make more bonds, or get more security. That's why good karma is not ultimately liberated. However, it is better than bad karma because when you have good karma, you not only get these wholesome things, these somewhat beneficial material advantages,

[62:49]

As I said, get some clarity of mind so that you have a chance of seeing this more subtle anxiety, and perhaps even have the opportunity to fear that this subtle anxiety is a pervasive phenomenon among the human beings, and that there is a condition for it, and that there is a solution to that condition. And studying karma helps you hear that teaching and address the more fundamental problem, the dhruv, which is at the source of karma, good or bad. But still, within the world of karma, there's something about virtuous actions which are connected to normal relative human happiness.

[63:52]

And to understand that, and to understand what the wholesome and unwholesome are, and to understand the primary types of wholesome and unwholesome, and to study them, and to know the roots of the faults in the anniversary, that understanding is the beginning of perfect forethought. How can problems happen for the suffering you face. I can't remember the names. There's several points that one of them was in regards to problems, you know, the bad karma, the pain for the bad karma, for past bad deeds.

[65:01]

And I'm wondering what the other people were suffering I can't remember how long it takes, but it makes that, it's kind of beneficial. Yes. And even if you aren't hooked into primal, If you're hooked into the delusion, which is at the base of karma, you step down there.

[66:17]

Even if you took a break from karma, like I said, even if you went into some state where you couldn't do any karma for a while, even if you go into a long term like just listening, But, you know, even if you've got some kind of, like, if things worked out so jetty, consider it a stretch of time where you're just experiencing and not doing it in common. Still, if you have delusion, you just make it possible to be anxious. So, um, just by the time It's a little loud. It's a little loud. And as relaxation takes place, you don't feel anxiety.

[67:22]

But I was one that still, in my life, I still experience it. It's still fun to get rid of it. Did you still experience what? Well, with my experience since I was young, yeah, when I was... A couple of them. Yeah, what I think, I mean, I think that what the plan was was like to allow a variety of media, um, That would be what? Yes, that would be good.

[68:28]

And... Why not? with anxiety to see how it happens. Someone said to me recently, what about Louis Pasteur? He wanted to get rid of some kind of disease. Was he kind of deluded or was he in a trauma that he wanted to get rid of the disease? And I said, not necessarily. It's OK to want to get rid of disease. It's OK to want to get rid of anxiety, too. But how did he get rid of the disease? He didn't actually get rid of the disease exactly. What he did was he studied the disease. And he found out the conditions for the disease. And he found out the organisms that interact with the human being.

[69:29]

He studied these organisms. But when he was studying these organisms, and you saw how they behaved, when you looked and saw how they behaved, you didn't say, I don't think you said, I wish these organisms weren't behaving like this. Because if you're watching something function and you wish it wasn't behaving that way, that interferes with your seeing how it's behaving. If you watch yourself or watch other people and you say, I wish I wasn't behaving this way, that might distract you from noticing the subtleties of how they're behaving. So I don't know exactly, but I think that Louis Pasteur or something like that watched these little microbes, saw how they worked, and didn't spend much time wishing that they weren't functioning the way they were functioning. He wanted to know how they were functioning, like you were saying, curiosity. He was curious about how they wanted to function. Of course he wanted to cure people, the disease they were causing, but he also wanted to understand the little critters. And a lot of people would like certain microbes to stop causing people sickness, but they aren't interested in the microbes, so they just sit there and wish that the microbes weren't doing what they're doing, or wishing that people weren't sick, which is fine, just like Louis Pasteur, but the difference between them and him is that he actually found out how they work.

[70:53]

Because he found out how they work, he could find a way out to get rid of them. He didn't get rid of those things. They're still around. he found a way to interact with them so that people wouldn't get sick. So same way with your karma. It isn't that you can get rid of the karma, exactly, or destroy it, but rather if you understand how it works, you'll see a way of relating to it such that it doesn't cause us problems anymore. And the same with deludic. And the same with anxiety. If you understand it, anxiety, delusion, and trauma, you can find a way to work with it such that it's not a problem anymore. And you might say, well, then wouldn't that be the end of it? Well, I don't know. It can't be so. After a while, everybody's free of it. So... Wholesome trauma, part of wholesome trauma is, as Linnea said, gives you the relaxation.

[72:01]

Another way of putting it, one of the results of wholesome trauma is leisure. So some people get in prison and they get leisure. So there's something wholesome about being in prison and getting leisure. Some people in prison don't have any leisure. They're constantly getting harassed by other prisoners, and they have their TV on all the time, and they're getting harassed by the guards, and so on and so forth. But some prisoners have leisure, and leisure is a result of, we would say, a wholesome family. Wherever you are, the leisure to have a chance to look at what you're doing, to be curious about something, rather than just sort of surviving the next minute, to be able to be curious and to study how things work. In this particular case, to be curious about how your mind works, how your body works, how your voice works, how karma works, how karma works.

[73:07]

or delusion works, or anxiety works, until you understand it. And if your problem's really bad, you get situations where you're living in such a way that you don't have time to study. But if you do really non-virtuous deeds in some system, you wind up getting beaten up all the time, and you might not be able to study, and you're getting beat up all the time. On the other hand, some very back religious practitioners do get beat up all the time, and it's kind of a challenge to their practice, like Jesus and some other people. Joseph Smith had a hard time. But he was quite a person. But he had quite a few quite a few opportunities prior to that to study, study, study, study.

[74:13]

It's like you have a chance to study. Study. Study karma. Yeah. When you say karma, I get the impression that we I don't know. But they're just worrying as they head to the funeral of the victim. Yes. That karma, karma accrues after the funeral of the victim, or after the funeral. In terms of, in terms of time. In terms of time? Well, you know, it's just really difficult. And what other form might I apply it to? Yeah. It's not exactly a poet.

[75:16]

It's just that I don't know. I couldn't know the kind of occurring to non-human that admit, well, that I don't have particular evidence of karmapunki for non-humans. The Buddha didn't talk about such a case of non-human karma. The Buddha was primarily concentrating on humans, about liberating human. And I think the idea was that if you can liberate human, liberated humans can help other kinds of living beings too.

[76:17]

Like they can help animals and plants once they're liberated. But the Buddha's teaching on what's verbal, primarily directed at human, the Buddha kind of said, It looks like the Buddha was kind of suggesting that it was only humans that could become Buddhas. And in some ways you might say only humans need to be Buddhas. Other animals don't necessarily need it. But once you're a Buddha, you're beneficial to other animals and plants. But they don't seem to have the problems that we have. Other animals don't seem to be quite as deceptive in the root of it as we are. You know, humans would exist in the same kind of form and kind as the world. Or with kind. Humans what? Humans would not have existed without... I'm just asking the instinctiveness in that is that humans wouldn't have the karma of having existed.

[77:26]

I'll figure it out and I'll vote for it afterwards. Some other quorum... Non-karmic quorum? Well, it could be. That's what I'm asking. Would karma exist? There are... Buddha did talk about other forms of existence, non-venient forms of existence. Yes. Starting at that point. Yeah, I would say it was starting.

[78:32]

Right. I would say it did not before that time. On this planet, I would say that it's before humans were able to know things objectively. There was a time when there perhaps weren't any animals on the planet that knew things objectively. and therefore there would be no sense of self as separate from other beings? I think it would be a kind of activity, but it wouldn't be the type of karma we're referring to here, which is a karma which is based on a particular type of delusion, which is that we're separate from other beings. It wouldn't be that type of karma. would be a different kind of action. And it could be evolutionary also.

[79:33]

I think it was. But it didn't require the kind of insight that produced the kind of Buddha that we have in this game. But I think it might be possible to have a Buddha for a previous level evolution, but there may have been a Buddha for that level of evolution too, that liberated beings from that type of suffering, whatever type of suffering there had been. But in this particular cycle, we have a Buddha for humans who have this idea of self, and for the karmic based on the idea of self. And the teaching of Buddhism for this particular cycle is addressed particularly to people who have hung up on self, on the idea of self. And that's the key issue in defining human suffering.

[80:46]

It's a key condition for human suffering, and it's the key condition for human kindness. The key to live. And it is the... It is the... the locus of generating karma, it is the locus of generating rebirth, and it is the site of retribution of rebirth. Yes. Yes. Thank you. And Stan's question at the beginning is, how can it be that if we teach that the self is empty, that it can be the place where the action is accomplished is the place where the recognition occurs?

[81:58]

How can that happen? And that's a problem for Buddhism, and that's part of which we hopefully will have a chance to address this week, how that can happen. How does something that doesn't really exist, how is it able to be the genetrix of karma and the receiver of karma? And this is important in terms of understanding, but it's also important in terms of our suffering. It's important to us that we're suffering. And that we're anxious. And it's important that what we do is bounce to our self to make it better. Yes?

[83:01]

Um, the practice is to say I don't find it unbelievable and then say, I can't. I can't. There's a... I mean... At least, at my glance, there seems to be all this unrighteousness. That's got to come up with a good life, with a good place, with a bad life, with a bad place. Unfairness and... You know what people like you're leaving now. You can get black, but I'm not going to send it to you. It's just... It's a chocolate or something. Yeah, I don't know. It's a kind of wax. If this is not ready, I'll do it. It's a kind of wax. It's a kind of wax. Okay, let's do your view of advance.

[84:24]

So, they say that the world is nothing but the result of karma. So, can you tell me a little bit about the question about mind-healing? Like rocks, are they the result of karma? Yeah. The entire universe is the result of karma. Is that because the way we are hearing see them as wrong? Mm-hmm. Okay. They're about hearing. They're about being in the world. They're about being in the world. That's right. They're being a universe. They're about being. They're about being a thing. I'm a creature in the world. Just that we're here, just that there's humans there, is the reason why we're here?

[85:42]

Yeah, we call it the universe. Huh? Yeah, we call it the universe. Yeah, that we call it the universe. So since we call it the universe, there's the universe. Right. If we didn't call it the universe, we don't know it would be there. Okay. What we have is something that we call rock. I think you just said the thing we call rocks. Are you saying that there's a substance there and you come along and call it a rock? Right, and also you have this idea that there's something there, and then you come along and call it a ride. But that's your idea. So you have this world where there's things there, and you come along and run.

[86:43]

So that's a world, right? A lot of people think that there's a world, and then you come along. And that's the way we think. That's the world that we think is there. but the world we think is there just happens to be, lo and behold, the one we think is there. We don't think there's another world besides the one we think is there, right? Isn't that right? And the one we think is there just happens to be the one we think is there now, and we used to think there was a different one. And at that time we thought that was the actual one. Remember? Remember the one you used to think was there? Remember that one? You thought that one was it, right? And now you think there's another one, and now you think this one's it. And later, and so on. And this seems to be, and it seems to be, what I think is that there's a story that it's been that way for a while.

[87:50]

I think that. Now, do I believe that? If I believe it, then that's my world. that's really my world, if I think it's been that way for a while. Now, some other people think it hasn't been that way for a while, and people used to think that the world they thought of wasn't the world. But I never heard of that one. Have you? I never heard of one like that. But somebody could make up like, what is it? Jorge Borges could make up a world like that, right? All the people in the world thought that the world that they thought of was not really the world. But I never read a book like that. Okay? For a while, I thought the world was square. Square or flat. And now we play various things. All kinds.

[88:52]

Huh? All kinds. You know, it's the result of creating. It's the result of the living thing. Who are you? From the world. From the rock. From the rock. Well, it's not so much from the rocks. It's from the belief that the rock is real. How is that different from what a common person would feel? A common person feels unfree. A common person feels unfree. A common person's unhappy.

[89:54]

A common person's anxious. About the rock. Huh? About the rock. About the rock, right. You don't get that. You don't mean I have to knock on the bottom of the rock? Probably. I'm not the least bit worried about that. I thought if one ran in your house, you know, you'd be tired enough to just do it. Do you have to be a doctor to knock on the bottom of the rock? Mm-hmm. Not much. No, no problems. I'm glad you dropped that. Well, usually people who have problems with one thing have problems with other things. You can look to it. But people who don't have problems don't have problems.

[90:58]

Anyway, all right. Rocks, if they're going along, rocks and people, if they're going along with the way we want, we expect them to be, we want them to be, we feel not too anxious. But online is actually somewhat disturbed by every, So if you think the rock's not you, you're disturbed by the rock. It causes you anxiety and uneasiness. If you think you're the same as the rock, you're disturbed by the rock. Any relationship you have at duality disturbs your mind. That's it. You may not notice that they bother you just by their duality. You may not notice the trees and top signs bothering you, even if you see them separately, but I propose that they do. And it's hard to know how things bother you unless you calm down quite a bit.

[92:06]

and get to a place where you can feel the disturbance that the slightest bit of externality causes you to be. And that externality and that anxiety is basically the congenitrix of our sense that something's wrong, and then if we have a self, we think we can do something to fix it. And it may be very subtle and very slight at first, but it gradually can build into major maneuvers to fix them.

[92:46]

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