And then, I thought I understood you to say an unlocated consciousness. No, consciousness isn't located. Consciousness is not located. So there's located life. Life can be located. Because life is a physical skanda. And physical... And physical, Scott, there's a physical quality to life. And physical things can be, the basic definition of the physical aspect of our existence is that it can be hit. It can be hit. The word for form is rupa. rupa actually means comes from bingy.

[01:06]

It means hit or beat or can be hit. And it can be, but mind can be hit too. But the way that the rupa can be hit is it can be hit by electromagnetic radiation, sound waves, gases, liquids, and tangible things. So those are of course physical things. Physical things have location. Physical things cannot cannot occupy the same place at the same time. But life also, consciousness, is an artifact of life. Or a consequence of life. But consciousness is not located. However, consciousness is not dislocated either. In a sense, like a It doesn't divorce itself from location, because that would be a location.

[02:07]

So, based on the located thing, consciousness arises, but the consciousness itself is not located. But it's like not nowhere. So, there is a consciousness in association with the body, but the consciousness isn't just at the body. Consciousness fills the body, but it's not located just in the body. It can go beyond the body. But it isn't like consciousness can't penetrate the body. It can't. That animates us. Somehow I feel like it's the body, nor it shouldn't be. that consciousness, which is associated with the body, I feel that that consciousness, that loses its basis for being what it is, namely, consciousness usually associated with the body of the consciousness, which is based, you know, arises in relationship to sense or in discrimination.

[03:31]

But there is, I feel that there's some that things don't just stop with no effects. And one of the effects of life is something like a consciousness, some kind of spiritual thing that carries what you call the impact of the life. Some impact of life goes on. And some people call that consciousness, but I don't think it's not the consciousness like As far as I can sense or make sense to me, it's not consciousness which knows duality. It's some kind of awareness, in the sense of some kind of non-physical register. It's almost like a kind of energy field that has a shape.

[04:43]

And the shape is determined by the way the mind and body function during the life when these five qualities, these five aggregates were together. So this... energy field where the shape goes into the E.A. realm or back to, after the five scientists pass away, there's the consciousness associated with the five It isn't that it goes into the intermediate realm. That is the intermediate realm. That's what the intermediate realm is.

[05:46]

It's whatever is the results of a life without a body before it activates further life. And it's, as always, this kind of thing is responding to various conditions. No, it doesn't have the same kind of hardware that it has when it's connected to a living being. It doesn't have sense organs. So it doesn't respond to physical things the way a sense organ does. So that dynamic thing that happens when sense organs respond to physical data, that interaction is not relevant to it anymore.

[06:49]

I mean, sense organs are responding to physical data, but this consciousness is not associated with those. You say, well, wouldn't it be associated in some ways with the children of the body, Maybe. A little bit. It's possible. Does this have a . No, it doesn't. Some people call it the same name that they call consciousness for the consciousness advocate during life. The Vigiana, you know. no indifference, but I don't think that's a good word for it. I think you'd better call it by the Sanskrit word to call it citta, which is more like expressing, that's another Sanskrit word for consciousness, more expressing the overall impression of what's happening.

[07:58]

So the overall impression somehow, everything that happened during your life, shapes what happens after your life. But many things that happen during our life and in relationship to our life are not our impression of our life. Like if you build a school with some kids who never go to the school, the kids who go to school have a different impression of the school you built than you do. For you, the school is how it was for you. That's how it impressed upon you. How you felt about the work or whatever, however you contributed to building the school. The effect that had on you and your motivation in doing it and your understanding of what you're doing for it, that's what would have impressed you. And that's shaped your consciousness.

[09:00]

And then that consciousness shaped in that way by your impression of what happens then becomes the And there's a relationship between consciousness, which is shaped like this, and what follows it. So a consciousness that was always impressed with the importance of practice and actually was able to dedicate its... was able to be impressed by the actuality of practice and was able to, like, be impressed by the observation outcome and all that. that consciousness would be a certain shape, a certain kind of consciousness, and that would be there. And then when that passed away, that would be a cause for the next consciousness. When the body then deteriorates and the skandhas disperse, all that would be the cause for what happens after. If there's a town and you take the town away, anything you take away,

[10:09]

it feels something after it's gone. And when you take away one thing, you feel differently when that's gone than when you take away another thing. You can say, well, you know, although of course there's a bigger hole when you take away New York City than if you take away Mill Valley. Yeah, sort of. Maybe even with your eyes shut, okay? Say, yeah, but still, you know, it would be different if you had You know, like, it's different to be standing on an island than be standing on a peninsula. Yeah. It's different if you just took away, you know, lots of, you know, tremendous amount of steel than if you took away a tremendous amount of wood. That's the point. So the more, you know, if you start talking about it, you realize it does make a difference what you take away. It feels different if you take away a forest than if you take away a parking lot. even if you can't, like, see it.

[11:11]

But if you can see it still, you can see it, you can smell it, you can smell it, you can taste it, you can sense the difference between two different things being gone. So when two people die, it leaves a different kind of effect of them being gone. And that effect, the difference in the effects of when we're dead, that's it. It's not something you can see, Exactly, but yet somehow it has an effect on you. You can be affected by spiritual things, even though you can't see them. They could affect your life. That's kind of why we're interested in this, because they could affect your life. So this person dies, and it's different than if that person dies. And that difference then causes another difference. A second after they die, there's a difference. And then two hours later, there's a difference. And then three weeks later, there's a difference.

[12:13]

And then pretty soon the difference might manifest as two different beings being reborn. And some people are sensitive to this. Some people can actually see it. And some other people have to, if they're interested, in this process, they would have to maybe do some experimentation, develop, you know, do some research. This kind of material could be subject to scientific research, not necessarily physical scientific research, but some kind of research. And at another point, at a later point in the process, it does get physical again, then you can subject it to physical research. So one can research and study this material. One can also develop non-physical senses which someone might even call non-natural senses, by which one can actually witness the progress of what survives, of what goes on after so-called death.

[13:17]

But I might just mention at this point that even being able to see that isn't the same as being able to understand what it means. Do you have any more questions about that this time? Yeah. Who else had a question left over for this morning? Christina? My question was, You're asking me if I would do that? Well, again, the traditional one is the one in that scripture we just read, namely, what? Where do you get lost?

[15:04]

ignorance isn't too abstract for you? And the karma based on ignorance isn't too abstract? You're okay so far? And then is the consciousness link too abstract? So that's where you... So you don't quite see how... Well... You don't quite see how consciousness might arise based on karma. So we postulate life. Then there's ignorance of life, in the midst of life. Life ignores itself. or ignores part of itself, at least.

[16:11]

And maybe there's pressures on a particular organism to do that ignoring. Not necessarily pressures, maybe just, what do you call it? Yeah, pressures. Not originally, maybe, but eventually, pressures developed. So originally, the conditions for ignorance might have been not exactly ignorance, but maybe just the ability to, yeah, I guess Just, yeah, ignorance in the sense of just being able to look away from the whole picture to concentrate on part of the picture. And that might have been useful in some way.

[17:24]

Might have gotten rewarded in some way. Now, the ability to do that might have been just sort of like, you know, a gift to life, you know, so that some life form could do that and did it. And then it got reinforced because it gave that life form some advantage over the other ones who didn't know that. Some things are not necessarily so hot, but just if nobody else has got them, they get hot. Oh, my God. the pressure isn't there yet this was just kind of an experiment that turned out to be successful then because it was successful and maybe because the ability to try it was based on what was available to the organism then this organism reproduces and other organisms then feel pressure some sort of genetic pressure to do it again okay

[18:36]

So now we have ignorance starts to become kind of established among this human living system. Now, based on this ignorance, you can make an entity. Because you can look at part of the picture. Forget about your parents for the moment. Forget about your grandparents. Forget about your teachers. Forget about your brothers and sisters. Forget about all the Fuji-8. Forget about all that just for a second, or forget about part of it, even though you're totally craving and attached to it and worried about it. Just forget that for a second and just notice that there can be something all by itself. And then there can be something else over there all by itself. And then worry about that. And then do something based on that karma. Or think you could do something. Or think that some action could be also compartmentalized.

[19:38]

And you compartmentalized, or this compartmentalized thing, can get involved with this compartmentalized function. Rather than the great being, in the great function, now we have the little being and the little function. So now we've got karma. This part you can follow. Now, what about consciousness? Consciousness, that's true. There's been consciousness all along, right? So, there's consciousness at the beginning. So, one of the things about these links is that although there's different names, the names don't mean that that's the only thing happening at that time. So, of course, in ignorance, there's a living being, there's consciousness already. But the consciousness is now turning away from the big picture to the little picture. Now there's consciousness, but now there's consciousness, and there's the idea of an entity and an action. Now, in the third one, there's consciousness. So what do we mean by consciousness? We mean that consciousness is now a consciousness, it's karmic consciousness.

[20:41]

Now, consciousness has become modified according to ignorance and karma. It's a dualistic consciousness. It's a consciousness of act and action, of self and other, of for and after, of this and that. Before it was like entities, and then entities and action. Now the consciousness is sort of like, what do you call it? What do you say? It establishes, it's a testimony or something like, or it's a monument. It becomes a monument to this dualistic activity. Consciousness then becomes karmic consciousness. It becomes the kind of awareness which represents this activity. karmic consciousness can be called, or consciousness of difference, both, either way. Now we've got consciousness. Now we're building something to keep this thing going.

[21:45]

Now the life system is starting to get modified to accommodate this ignorance and this karma. First, the life system gave ignorance a chance. Then ignorance gave karma a chance. Now, they're now giving the actual life the shape of the consciousness, starting to become a servant of ignorance and karma. Okay? So now what do we do? Now we start splitting up the elements of consciousness. So first of all, consciousness itself splits into two. And then within consciousness, the various elements are, you know, like, you know, like they're bopping around with each other all the time. They become separate. So, you know, feelings and emotions and consciousness, you know, they get split up.

[22:52]

So you get name and form, body and mind, subject and object, all that stuff starts happening. Okay? Now, because everything's split apart, then the next thing that will happen once it's split apart is that because it's split apart, they can come together. And there can be contact. Of course, it could be contact before, but now we're emphasizing the contact between things that have been split apart. And that creates a feeling. Now, there was feeling before, But now feeling becomes intensified in terms of bringing these things which have been separated back together. I don't know. I think there's feeling all the way through. But it wasn't necessarily feeling like feeling of something outside yourself.

[23:57]

It's more like feeling in the dark. But you don't necessarily say that's outside me. You just touched it. There was touch. There was feeling or smell. Things maybe happened, but you weren't necessarily saying they're outside. Like maybe some animals who are responding to things, like an amoeba response to things, but doesn't necessarily say they're outside itself. In the mind, too. There's maybe a response in all the different elements. Because if there's karma, there's various kinds of shapes and stuff like that. What we're doing here, I think, in a sense, is we're trying to construct a more powerful engine for keeping this thing going, to turn the mine into a servant of this system, of this real system.

[25:00]

So all the elements, basically, I'm not necessarily suggesting any new elements are introduced. And if you look at the names of these different links, it sounds like we're saying, well, then then there's sensation and then there's feeling. But no, I think all the complements of the organism are pretty much there at the beginning. But I think the different steps are steps by which of a progression, institutionalization and rigidification and strengthening of the process to keep this ignorance and karma going. If ignorance and karma happen, but without any way to continue, then there's a different story. Then there's a moment of ignorance and a moment of karma, and that's it. See you later. Just go back to interconnectedness and nobody's doing anything anymore. Just life. But no, we're talking about how this thing gets perpetuated. So in order to perpetuate it, we've got to have more than just ignorance and karma.

[26:03]

We've got to get the whole system kind of in coordination with this. We've got to make some system Not the whole system, but we've got to make some system that can keep this going. That can bring the body and bring a whole section of the body into it. As much as possible. As much as we keep enjoying it. Then you have feeling and not feeling is a feeling in service of ignorance and karma. A strong feeling? Rather than just a pretty important feeling. A feeling which, you know, is strong enough to drive us to crave more of it, or crave less of it, or just crave existence.

[27:11]

So then craving arises. And this is a real important one. Up to that point, maybe, rebirth could be stopped. But once you slip into craving, it's really hard to stop it now. This is the step where it's really starting to drive towards rebirth. And then clinging, and then clinging an inclination to cling to something, and then it turns into becoming. I want to bring something forward and make it more, [...] make it become, make it become, and then birth. But this is a birth, a birth which is in the service of this particular type of

[28:16]

story, and maybe there's no other bird than this one. The entity of the feeling or the entity associated with the feeling. Pardon? This would be what? No, we haven't got to death yet. We're just at birth now. So far, I'm telling a story that's In that cycle, it was after the death.

[29:26]

Yeah, but, okay, but before, the death is way back before the ignorance. Well, the death is a result of the ignorance, yeah. Okay, so what were you going to say? Yeah, you can wake. So then comes death. Well, then comes aging, sickness, blah, blah, blah, and then death. But it's death I've always borne from craving, so that death doesn't just stop with nothing, no effect. The effect is ignorance. Ignorance is going on. Ignorance is going on. And what does ignorance do? Ignorance conjures up eventually, more karma.

[30:31]

Life's all around through this whole story. There's no shortage of life. It's just a question of how to bring it down, bring life down into some package that can go through this birth and death process. So this is how we convert life which isn't born and doesn't come and go into life which does come and go. By subjecting this life which doesn't come and go, this dharma life, this infinite life, subjecting it to ignorance, and then ignorance pulls this dharma life down into this little thing, and this little thing goes round and round. You get a better feeling for it now? The cycle? So now it's on round one.

[31:40]

So this is that harmony, I'm just creating that then for empathy to be born again. Well, you can crave for babies, boyfriends, girlfriends, pleasure, no more pain, health, pain. Crave for anything, anything in the world of ignorance you can crave. And part of what you can crave is sexual activity, which produces wonderful living beings, wonderful little limited living beings within this cycle of birth and death. Okay?

[32:43]

Looks like there's right in the end of the question, but you can't ask it yet. So, I don't know. Stan, did you have your hand raised? One in three marks? What are the three marks? Yeah, but those are things you see when you start to recover from your hands. That's when you start to wake up. You're still in the world of birth and death, right? in the world of things, the characteristic of worldly existence is suffering, impermanence, and no suffering. Okay?

[33:44]

Life is based on ignorance, is that what you said? I didn't say that. I said birth and death are based on ignorance. Life is not based on ignorance. You don't need ignorance for life. You do not need ignorance for life. Life could have life without ignorance. Okay? Ignorance is an option. Did you know that? There's another option. Do you know what it is, Stan? It's nearby in the alphabet. Back a few steps. That's another option that life has. Life has two options, you could say, ignorance and enlightenment. Ignorance is based on life, yeah, but life is not necessarily ignorant.

[34:52]

I know of no ignorance. I don't care about any ignorance that's not life-based. If non-living things are ignorant, it's not really an issue for me. So far. Okay? What are you thinking about, Stan? Okay. So, based on ignorance, then there's karma. Based on karma, there's a world. They say, where does the world come from? The answer? Karma. But karma is based on ignorance. Where does karma come from? Ignorance. So the world is really based on ignorance and karma. And what are the characteristics of the world? It has three marks. The world means the world based on karma and ignorance.

[35:54]

It has three marks. The things in it are painful, impermanent, and don't have self. OK, go ahead and ask your question now. Well, we have this 12-minute chain, which, as you pointed out, doesn't necessarily follow the second order. But you can go back through it or forward through it and say this is based on that, and this is based on that. Actually, this is dependent on that. Right. Each one is dependent on the other ones. It depends on life. You've got to have life significance. How does it arise? How does it arise? It arises when a living being ignores some part of what's happening.

[36:56]

Yeah. Just for a living being to narrow his vision or her vision or its vision. And then to think that's real. And deal with that and forget about the rest of the picture. So at first, narrowing the vision isn't so bad. It's a temporary ignoring, okay? Like if I look away from you and look over here at Eileen, I'm not looking at you, but if I say there's no Stan anymore, because it's just because I don't look at you anymore. That's making ignorance kind of hard. But temporarily, for a living being, you know, living beings can't be aware of everything all the time, right? Because they have these sense organs. So in some sense, they narrow their perception to what they're working with at the time. But then to sort of say, what I'm not looking at now is gone, or what I don't care to look at anymore,

[38:06]

is gone, and then to fix my view into certain small ways, then ignorance is established. And this is something a living being can do. And then if you get reinforced for it, you're thinking again while I'm talking, but I'll stop. You can do that. You can think, and then when you're done thinking, you can say what you've been thinking about, because it doesn't do much good for me to talk while you're thinking. Not to you, anyway. So you can go back into thought, and then when you're done, you can come back. Right, then it gets stronger. So for example, if we get reinforced for not noticing that we're connected, then we start to forget that we're connected. Like if you forget about that you're connected to your neighbor and your wife says, nice going, Stan, then you think, fine, I'll just keep forgetting about my neighbor.

[39:31]

My wife seems to like it. My neighbor doesn't even know I'm ignoring him yet. She's nicer to me today from me ignoring the neighbor. I don't know why she's giving me this reinforcement, but she is. So I guess I'll just forget about my neighbor. And rather than just actively forget about it, like trying to forget about it, I'll just forget about it. Pretty soon, there's no neighbor. You're ignoring your neighbor. You feel you lose your connection with your neighbor. And pretty soon it's just you and your wife, and then pretty soon it's just you. And then you can do something. All by yourself. Because you can be all by yourself. Because you can ignore everything else in the universe, but you. I mean, you can be something separate from them.

[40:33]

You can ignore your connections. And then you can have anxiety. Because the whole world's bearing down on you, threatening you. It's you against the entire universe. except those who are temporarily on good terms with you. Okay, now you're scared. Now, if there's anything you can do about this to assuage your anxiety, it'd be good to do, right? So, karma. But ignorance isn't the only option for us. It's just that it is an option. It got reinforced. So it's here. The other way is interconnectedness. But that didn't get reinforced in the same way. It's like our mother gave us milk, but being aware that she's given us milk didn't necessarily reinforce it. It just gave us body fat. But noticing and being grateful, you know, that's not a big deal.

[41:36]

Mothers don't reinforce us for being grateful, necessarily, because most kids aren't even grateful in the first place. There's nothing to reinforce. They just take, take, take. You know? And they get by with it. So they get reinforced by being selfish by their mothers. And what else can she do? You know? If she waits for the kids, you know, generous and says, man, please, you know, I really appreciate this, the kid will die first, right? So she says, I'll feed you, and then when you're six, I'll tell you, I'll teach you about being grateful. Meantime, the kid got this really strong habit of take, take, take with no gratitude, right? And then sometimes they start teaching at 6, but they don't get it until they're 40. Because that early habit is really strong. And they can't really believe that the program is being switched anyway for a long time. So we get supported in our ignorance, and so it's strong.

[42:36]

But the other option was there. all along, the option of interconnectedness and just swimming in it. That's why we say enlightenment, because, actually, enlightenment is meant to remember what was going on before we were ignorant. So you wake up, you go into this dream, you know? You're actually, like, interconnected with everything, and you go into this independence dream. And then you go into the independence dream and go, zzzz, [...] for quite a while. And finally, you study it and wake up out of the dream. By admitting the dream, you wake up out of the dream and you're back into the huge world that was there before you brought life down to this little thing, this birth. So consciousness is actually out there relating with the big picture. And so to get reborn, you have to drag yourself down to this little thing and hook yourself onto something small.

[43:38]

That's what it takes. And the consciousness which can hook you onto something small is the birth consciousness. Meantime, although it hooks you onto something small, it also connects you to everything else, too. We don't close off all our options when we get born. We're still connected. The world doesn't reject it just because we forgot about it. By the world, I mean the Dharma world doesn't reject us just because we forgot about the Dharma world and traded into the little world of birth and death. And that brings me back to something I have with Christina and you were talking. And that is, in going through step by step, it seems to me that I see birth, as we know it, at that step of ignorance of choosing to see part of the picture, as opposed to living all of life.

[44:46]

So I don't understand how birth happens with cleaning, and I don't understand how birth happens with cleaning, even regardless of what I could do. So you don't understand how birth, regardless of what you just said before... That's like a double whammy. I see birth happening, as I said, from the difference. We create these little entities. We create... So I don't understand how we talk about birth coming after we get down to the clinging state, and that clinging then, through clinging, we then have birth.

[45:49]

It feels to me like we've already been born when we chose not life, but a limited version of life. Yeah, that's right in a way. As soon as you're ignorant, basically, you've been born. I mean, that 12-fold change, In some sense, as soon as there's ignorance, a limited being is born at that very moment. And the 12 links could all be seen as happening simultaneously. And also at that moment, as soon as you have ignorance, you die. So birth and death happen at the same moment as soon as ignorance is born. Because you die of full life? So then... You die of full life, and you're born of a little life. And you're going to have a little life that goes life and death all the time. As soon as it's ignorant. But you can also spread it out over many lifetimes or over a few minutes or whatever. You can also articulate it out because that's the way time is, actually.

[46:52]

Time is not like these old packages. But we make it that way because that's the way we think. So we have clocks and they're really fun. Dalai Lama really likes clocks. Actually, I think one of... One of our students was having a meeting with him, and she told him that she was thinking of becoming ordained here, but she still is thinking of becoming ordained. And he looked at her, and she had earrings on. She said, will those be the last to go? Yeah. I guess he looked at her, and the only attachment he could see was her jewelry. He said, will those be the last to go? And she said, well, I don't know, they might be the first to go. And then Dalai Lama said, but I really like my watch. He said, you know, it's terrible, not Tibetan monks all have watches.

[47:56]

You know? So in terms of what we're talking about today, it's terrible that Tibetan monks... all into like you know they're enjoying breaking up time into packages and have these little tools which break up time in little packages it's kind of terrible in a way he loves watches he loves to fix them for all his mucks right he repairs watches too i don't know if he repairs his neutron watches here but you know i think he repairs regular mechanical watches and he enjoys it so you know he's ashamed of it So anyway, time, you could say, as soon as you're ignorant, you're born and you die at the same time. Or you can spread it out and tell the story and see more of the ingredients that you're involved with. If it's helpful. And the Buddha thought it might be helpful. But another thing I would like to mention is that there's 12 links There's almost no place you can find in all of his teaching where he actually went through the 12 links, really, in the early teachings.

[49:01]

Really, that was made up later and attributed to him. He presented it. It looks like he actually did present it in 5 and 8 and stuff like that. But this 12 is kind of a little bit made up. But you could also present it as, and he sort of did in this one, he said, ignorance, karma, and the rest. Another way to say it. Ignorance in common may be enough, but it's also nice to mention some of the other ones, too, because you can practice with them, like craving and so on. So I don't understand, going back to the same part of departure, that that seems to the point where We are no longer a full life and we go into our little self, our little entity existence. That is death, and I don't understand how come rebirth and death happens.

[50:05]

I don't understand how the cycle keeps going. Why after there is that birth and death which is simultaneous? I would say because there's some advantage to ignorance. That's what I've said. Reproductive opportunities, basically. Well, you want continuity to promote this continuity. And you also want to have continuity in this innovation. Innovations like to maintain themselves. If you're happy that that happened, and they want to go on. Like the innovation of being able to think dualistically. In some sense, you know, life was very proud when human beings started thinking dualistically.

[51:13]

In some sense, life was kind of like, I mean, sick, but amazing. This is going to be problems, but still, you've got to give it to us. This was a real breakthrough. That's the story of a moron psyche, you know? Love, you could know love. Before that, love was just love. But now, we know it. That's the story of the Garden of Eden. The apple was good, but now you can know the apple. You can have the apple. There's an advantage in having it. Other people are just eating it, and there's other morons walking around just being happy. Now, you can collect all the apples for yourself and sell them to them. And they'll pay for them, you know, and they never think, geez, I could open a store too. No, they didn't even occur to them. But they know they've got to get the apples from you. They want the apples, you know. So anyway, there's some advantage to ignorance. Ignorance... Somebody asked one Zen Master, how come we have evil?

[52:16]

And I would say, how come we have ignorance? And he said, it thickens the plot. laughter So, you know, we had everything was great. We had the Garden of Eden. That was good. Now we have something more than the Garden of Eden. We have kicked out of Garden of Eden. We have tried to get back to Garden of Eden. We have Garden of Eden 1, 2, and 3. We have near Garden of Eden. You know? Life, you know, you can't stop it. So it made ignorance. And it was a real hit, that ignorance thing. And so we've been trying to recover from it ever since. At the same time, it's been developing ever since, too, because it has certain advantages for certain aspects of life. Certain life manifestations increase, proliferate themselves through ignorance. And we're it. We human beings have proliferated and took over the planet.

[53:25]

in some ways because of our ignorance. Yeah, right. And if it's really... Right. Maintenance. And if not maintenance, reproduce it just in case they break. Instead of maintaining them, just have a whole bunch of them. So maintaining and replication is... That's what genes are about, aren't they? They're about reproducing themselves. That's our base. And ignorance has some advantage. Has some advantage. Ignoring interconnectedness. Power has certain advantages over love. And sometimes the organism chooses power over love. And power is related to karma. Karma is about power. Not about love.

[54:28]

What? They kind of exclude each other, yeah. Ignorance is the basis of power. Ignorance is looking away from love. Love is what really makes us happy, but sometimes life doesn't care about happy life. Sometimes life cares about, well, maybe to be happy later after we take over. This is, you know, some... theories of the origins of proliferation of ignorance. But don't spend too much time on the theories of the proliferation where it came from. I would suggest spending the primary amount of time studying ignorance rather than getting into its history. And the world that ignorance has created is a world where there's things.

[55:31]

In the world of ignorance, there's things. And things, all things, are characterized by impermanence, not self, and ill. And that's a message to you. But again, you're not supposed to believe that. You're supposed to check it out. See if things are like that for yourself. And then, That will help you tune in to the thing-making, to the karma and ignorance. So those qualities which you might not be able to see, ignorance and karma, the thing quality may help you see them, and or studying karma may help you see the marks of things. Over the marks means you're starting to tune in to reality, and you start seeing either one. Let's see, I think you had your hand up a long term. one that was connected in some way to the skandhas, and the one that was not.

[56:45]

And I don't like the word consciousness too much, but anyway, when the consciousness is associated with four other skandhas, we have what we usually call a living being, or a Buddha. Buddha's going to have five skandhas too. But for us humans, normal humans walk around with five skandhas. And normal Buddhists have faiskandas too. When you die, the faiskandas are dispersed. They don't come together. They're not all cooperating anymore. The system which has been created is, in some sense, depleted and dispersed. That's called death. Something goes on. It's kind of like, if you talk about it, it sounds a little like consciousness. And whatever that is, an energy pattern that has a shape, and a shape determined by the life and practice of the deceased, that shape can lead to life being brought down again to a small scale.

[57:54]

So that shape's flying through the life field, and it can gouge out in the whole totality of life a little being. connect and it gouges it out in a location. The place it gouges it out is usually in the body of some kind of other living being. Or in something deposited or thrown off by the body of another living being, like an egg floating in the water or something. author of an action then develops with retribution. That's pretty good.

[58:56]

And there's kind of like embedded in this consciousness or this residual effect from the previous life is a little authored prompt or nodule or indentation. And the way that an authored capacity was part of what the person was working with. how well they understood that, and how they were fooled or not fooled by that imagination, how well they understood that, would shape that, and the rebirth would be affected by that. And the possibility of practicing soon after birth would be related to how that was shaped, how that was understood, how that was studied. But that is what carries the tag or the bump or whatever that It doesn't exactly carry it, it's more like transmits it, because it's like it's there, and then it goes away. Because this thing, this is about birth and death, right? This is like a thing that lasts for a little while and goes away, but it has cause and effect.

[59:57]

Then it causes another one, another something else. It's a sequence, a causal connection among various things, which then can finally be the cause for a birth, for a dragon, in dragging life into a birth. And that continues on through, you know, we talk about karma, the retribution of karma, being able to carry forward many lifetimes potentially. Yes. It's that same shape that keeps moving from... Well, it's not that same shape, it's a shape. A shape. It's a shape, [...] a shape. And karma was a shape in the first place, wasn't it, of course. We were emphasizing a particular shape in the whole universe and shapes of life. We're focusing on a little shape all the time. That's very important. And then the author of the shape.

[60:58]

And the thing is on the shape. This becomes important to us. So we have to like, and so we should take that. Since it's important to us, we should realize it's important. When the study of the shape, somehow when the word gets out, somehow the message comes to studying the shape is helpful, understanding the shape is helpful, then we're starting to influence the shape. The shape is starting to get, the shape is starting to turn more and more into what? Something which will give birth to practice, which will be more studied. Until the shape is like, the impulse is, always to practice. So it's kind of a practice shape around the karma shape, which is antidote to the karma shape. So the person in the karma shape isn't karma anymore. It's just activity which takes a body if it's healthy.

[62:03]

Otherwise, it doesn't take a body in this limited thing way. It's just out there in the vast openness of life space. And no birth and death. And then Buddha's not around anymore. Buddha doesn't come back. But it's not like Buddha will snuff. Buddha is out there swimming around the ocean of interconnectedness. Shakyamuni Buddha is just everywhere. Shakyamuni Buddha is in all of us right now. Connected to all of us. We've all got Shakyamuni Buddha. Plenty of Shakyamuni Buddha. As much as there is, we've got it. Total availability of Shakyamuni. He doesn't need to, like, do this birth thing of coming on to being the human guy that's born and died. But until we... Until we get beyond karma, or the karma shape, this thing is distinct.

[63:06]

It's the shape that moves forward through incarnations. Until we get beyond karma shape now. Right. have a Buddha still has a shape, but isn't pulled by the shape. The Buddha's mind can have all the ingredients of everybody else's mind, have shapes, which are the shape of what is karma for somebody else, but the Buddha isn't falling for the imagination of the author, so the shape is just activity. It's like this, or like this. The Buddha can take shapes, but these shapes are not entity-driven shapes. This shape isn't based on ignorance. It's just activity of freedom. Freedom can go like this, like this, like this, like this. Freedom can manifest in all these ways. But when there's an entity that has authorial power, then all these shapes become

[64:12]

don't commingle or disperse. Right. They maintain a distinct nature. Well, that's the imagination, yeah. You think so, so because you think so, there's an effect of thinking so. Actually, there aren't any entities like that, that aren't commingling with other entities. All entities depend on other entities. They're all supporting each other, so that's why there aren't any entities, because they all need each other. It seemed like there was any important conservation. There was some intrinsic or inherent. There aren't any intrinsic or inherent entities. We imagine them to be so, and our imaginative to be so, we can pull it off because we're ignorant. Okay. So then we can say, oh, okay, there's this thing all by itself. But we overlook. Like everybody in California knows that everything's interdependent now, right? Even the people in prison probably know. These people walking in death row saying, yeah, we're all interconnected. It's on airwaves all over California.

[65:29]

Did you hear the latest? This is the greatest. Steven Seagal has been found out to be an incarnate. He's actually a Buddha. Oh, yeah. Steven Seagal. Is he a Buddha or a student of Buddhism? He's an incarnate plumber. Right. He's been found. He's been realized. He's been found out. He didn't know. Somebody told him he is. Isn't that wonderful? He's in the Chronicle book. He's a real entity. He's a martial arts action hero. He blows up submarines and stuff like that. yeah so there's a cynical remarks but anyway there it is you know enjoy this one this is like this is one of the most fun things I've heard it's really interesting anyway there we live in a place where everybody knows by interconnectedness you know practically everybody goes for it but really people think there's an

[66:49]

And that belief is based on ignorance. Even though you're bombarded with everything's interconnected, everything's interconnected, and I know we're all interconnected, we're all interconnected, but really, deep down, you know, you say that, but there's a few pauses between, you know, when you stop saying it, but never forget. And we're still saying, I know. Even if you don't say that, you need to change your language, still, deep down, you know, there's entities, and you can get by with it, because ignorance says, that's right, sweetheart. But that's an illusion. That's wrong. I mean, that's suffering. But these entities are what? There aren't any entities. Please imagine them. Yes. Linda's responsible for all of these. She's generated the entities, and then the entities built the world. They're the little aliens, right? No, what they detect is the people, they detect freedom from these entities.

[68:06]

That's what they're supposed to be detecting. They go around the world and then they can spot, oh, there's no belief in this entity here. And then they hold something up to the area where there's no belief in entity and then gas it. No entity believed here. See? Yeah. What is that called? Tokuru means he is the rebirth of some significant spiritual person who died a while ago, who died about 40 years ago, I guess. And he was reborn as little Stevie Seagal, who grew up to be this big movie star, very powerful, practically supernatural guy. And now we find out that he's going to have to cut down on his movies a little bit to start teaching Dharma.

[69:13]

Give workshops. His workshops on rebirth will be very popular. Now, the people who have not been asking questions, I would like to point them out and let me know that I will gradually be encouraging them more and more, unless they want to talk about it more and more. Before? Before? Okay. Then I'll do it later after you ask the question, since you haven't asked for anything. Going back to the... You were talking about death, a third-life question, one can be affected by the death. Okay. I wrote it down. I'm just... I'm going to say it again. I got distracted by something. Just start again. Okay. One can be affected by the death. You were talking about the energy field, the spiritual aspect.

[70:20]

Yes. What I want to know, and I need to personalize this, is that when I was killed, I, um, for 49 days. Yes. At first, when I was sitting, I heard strongly about this person. Yes. One night around, a half weeks later during the time. And when I went in, I had a very strange, empty feeling. And all I could think of was just one. Well, a lot of people have that experience of feeling a strong presence and then feeling that it's not there.

[71:25]

And somebody told me recently that I think it was her mother died, and the kids were there when the mother died, and they kept playing in the room. They were just hanging around with my grandmother, you know. As she was dying, they were just loud in the room. They played in the room. The kids stuck in the room. Right after the time she died, and continued to do it after she died for a certain number of days, and then suddenly they just stopped going back to the room. All of a sudden, they didn't even go there. I guess they went there, and nothing was there, and then they just stopped going. Grandma wasn't there anymore. And that's what the kid's sense was, I guess. I think she might have said, well, she's not there now, or something like that. So people do have a sense of the presence of the person. So... In a sense, I said that consciousness isn't located, but I mean it's bigger than the location. But still, sometimes it's very intensely present in one place, and then it's not there anymore.

[72:29]

And it does inhabit the body and animate it, and it can also shrink to a part of the body. I think that's probably what happens when you're going to shock. So I think It might be that what you think is part of the actual normal spiritual phenomena, is that there's presence for a while, and then there's not, and you can feel it. It might not have been your imagination. It might have been and then they were born far away. Well, and Chris said that he took three weeks into prison, and at that time he was going to have a business in his home and that happened.

[73:33]

He was competing so, and in fact, and then he made the statement, and it would be okay if I died. I went over there, I went to my hospital, and I took my hand. And it was, she was not there. I think that's possible, that with modern science that you can keep the organism going through the motions, even though what normally atomates it is evaporating.

[75:06]

Just like if you look at the birth scene, right? Conception scene, you have the egg, right? Egg's a living thing in a way. It just doesn't have of the poor sexual information, right? It's only got half, the egg is a sex cell, right? So it doesn't have the four ingredients for what we call a human being. It's got half, right? It's got half cells, half ploids, the cells in their half ploid form, isn't that right? Whatever I'm talking about, I don't know. But anyway, when it's fertilized, boom, you've got all the information there for normal human, right? That could be there, and it's actually kind of like a living being in a way. But there's no consciousness there for a while. Now we say that's conception, but it might be possible someone very sensitive could say, there's nobody there yet. And then suddenly you might feel something's there.

[76:12]

That the effects of some other living being who had a body but doesn't have one anymore has now touched that energy this potential life form when it comes alive. Now, I don't know whether this fertilizer can sit there for a second, a minute, or, you know, three hours, or ten hours. I know it can't stay there a real long time. It doesn't stay there for 28 days before it starts moving. But maybe in some rare cases it can stay even that long. But the point is, if you have the ingredients of the life but not necessarily It hasn't been turned on, necessarily. And if that can happen, I think the opposite can happen. But you can keep the ingredients there that the consciousness is not there, that it has left, and move on to, you know, to bring down, maybe to bring down more life out of this field into this primitive form. So I think both of those could have been, you know, in other words, there could have been something on the other side of your experience, not just your imagination.

[77:18]

Your children could have been responding This is the time you felt. It's possible. We have these, you know, unusual things now. Being able to keep people going by various means. Keep the plumbing and stuff going. Even though the person says, I don't want to hang around here. And again, in the case of various spiritual teachers, In some cases, a person dies, and you sense them there for a little while, and they're gone. In other cases, a person dies, you sense them there, and they're around a long time. So they've been a long time. Some people have seen both cases. This person left that, or this person's been around for a while. They're different styles. People have various agendas of this karma. Well, I...

[78:20]

I felt like Suzuki Rishi was there until he left Zen Center. But I didn't feel like he was there after the mortician did his stuff. Well, he was at Zen Center for about 12, no, about 8, 7, 10 hours. after so-called died, after what you usually call death. You know, what we usually call death is the heart stops and stuff, no breathing. About ten hours after that, he was in Zensi, and we took him to the mortuary. And in those days, he was really the first death that we really worked with, closely at Zensi. And the Japanese tradition was to go to the regular Western mortuary. So we did that. a light embalming.

[79:23]

And so then when we went back to see him, I didn't particularly feel like he was there at all. But I thought I was, I mean, he was different, really different. And I would think that most people would skedaddle during the embalming process. I think most people would skedaddle as soon as they put them in the refrigerator. Unless Unless there was a window and an refrigerator and all their friends were looking in. Hi. Don't leave. We want to have a little party. Please stay a little longer. We have a few questions for you. Unless there's some encouragement, I don't think like, what's the point, you know? But some people feel like it helps people to hang around for a while, so they do. At some point, in staying present, and they have the ability, and their spiritual background is such a, that can respond to Another way to put this, I feel, is that if you're the kind of person who, during your life, people are praying for you, if that's the kind of life you have, if they're praying for you and they want you to be happy, they want you to be healthy, they want you to keep teaching, because you're helpful to them, you pray for them, they pray for you.

[80:45]

If you have that kind of life, then after you die, they pray for you too. So they kind of like, since you have that kind of relationship with people, it goes on after your deaths. So sometimes other people support, are part of the support for your practice when you're alive. Other people are part of your support at your death, too. That's why it's just natural that you do services for people that you were kind of praying for when they were alive. Even people maybe that don't seem to be great spiritual heroes, people who somehow get you to care about them, are kind of like great spiritual heroes. No way. People who can get a lot of people to care about them, that's good, and then you care about them after. So that's part of what supports you, too. That's part of what you are, is what people do for you after you're dead. So if you can get a lot of people to pray for you now, they'll probably pray for you after you're dead. So it's a good deal to get people to pray for you and help you now. You might start asking some people to start praying for you.

[81:48]

So the people who have not asked very many questions are Aline, one of the leaders. Low question count there. And Linda hasn't asked very many. Have you asked any? No. No? And so those are the people. Those are the low question askers. So we would like some questions from you someday. And there's some other people who haven't asked very many. You haven't asked very many. I'd like more from you. More from you. People who feel they haven't asked very many questions. Dana hasn't asked very many. Try to get comfortable with it. Particularly those who haven't asked any, please ask some. Or not necessarily ask questions, but make a few statements, perhaps.

[82:53]

Or make an answer, too. Who would you like to stay at this time? I'm glad my daughter's a dog. I'm relieved. Thank you. I live. Any chance? When did you die? Yes, definitely a chance. When did you die? December 31st. Yeah, definitely. might come back as one of your children. But having various incarnations before that because it's been too long for it to wait, you would be already considered pregnant if it's going to be one of your children.

[83:58]

But it might be a child of yours? So species, I mean, humans can only come back as humans? Humans don't just come back as humans according to certain people who see these things. Humans don't just come back as humans. Humans sometimes come back as and even sometimes come back at plants. We have one story in Zen literature of a monk who came back as a mushroom. But it was an unusual mushroom because not all mushrooms had previously been monks. This mushroom was an unusual mushroom because as soon as you picked it, it grew right back. It was edible mushroom. And this mushroom appeared on a tree in the garden of one of the main donors of this monk.

[85:02]

So this monk received donations from a number of people. But a lot of those people were insincere in their donations. They were trying to give something for themselves by giving to this monk. One particular person and his son were not only donors, but they donated with a very pure heart. And he didn't live, his practice didn't live up to the sincerity of their gift. So he was reborn of a mushroom so he could feed them in his future life. So they could get to eat all, they got to eat him over and over. That's the story. Is that? They were the only one who could see at all. I missed that point. So sometimes humans can even come back as plants.

[86:07]

Maybe not the usual kind of plants. Service-oriented plants. All this is supposedly possible. I personally don't quite see that in terms of I haven't witnessed it and seen that. There she goes. Now she's a planet. Now she's in. But the more I think about it, the more open I am to these stories. And it's not a heart attack. Well, I think the hierarchy is the hierarchy of helpfulness. It's considered, if you live a good life, you get to take a formula, you get to be more helpful and have more joy. So I think it's the hierarchy of the hierarchy of happiness.

[87:09]

The hierarchy of understanding. That if you practice well, you get opportunities to be reborn in a formula where you practice with. could even be more full. So what some people think is they want to be reborn in Pure Lands. The nice thing about Pure Lands is that it's really easy to practice in Pure Lands. They're not just happy places. They're places where you can just really find lots of opportunities to practice medicine. Did you guys say anything at this time? No? Okay. And Indy? No? It's kind of catching on. How about now, Lita?

[88:17]

Let's see, now, any of the more... For the other people, have you asked lots of questions? Would you like to ask a question now? Yes? I mean, the Buddha didn't teach like a week. Yeah, right. Some people think that Buddha taught... There's this thing called environmental karma, which some people translate it as group karma. And I don't understand that as actually karma. I think what that means is the environmental effect of lots of individual people's karma. Because karma is based on the idea of individuality. In a marriage, what do we have here?

[89:23]

We have a little honey tissue this week. These two people. They're interacting. Is this person a comic? This person thinks in terms of comic, is that what you're saying? Well, you get to choose. Are you talking about that they're interacting comically or not? This person is interacting comically, is this one responding to them comically, is that what you're saying? Okay, so I can see that. That's the way me and my wife are. I do comic, she does comic. I don't know if she does comic. Maybe she doesn't do it, but I do.

[90:24]

So what's your benefit in that situation? So what happened with just creation together? I don't see that I'm creating kind of with her. I don't think, oh, now I'm talking and she's getting in there and helping to do it. Not when I'm talking. I take responsibility for what I say. If I think that I'm talking, And I do. If I don't think that, and I just find these words coming out of me sort of miraculously, that's fine, too. But I never think that she's, like, in there, you know, getting me to talk. I don't see that. Right. But a common delusion for me is that I think this person really just made me happy or made me sad. You know, I mean, I'm all into that. Yeah. And then I think it... So you have this conception. You sometimes perceive a perception. Or this person who made me happy.

[91:27]

Okay? That's not karma. That's just an idea. That's just like, you know, an image coming to you. It's a little story. A story of so-and-so made me happy. That's a little concept. Where I can make something happy. Even I can make so-and-so happy is not karma. It's just, again, just a concept. I can make something happy. Now, I want to make somebody happy. Or I, you know, that's giving you the kind of I want to make somebody happy. I want to. I want to do something. I want to do something. That's karma. That's mental karma. I want to avoid somebody. That's karma. That's mental karma. But that's not the other person. Not doing anything, necessarily. The other person may have died three weeks ago. But you're still thinking of them and you say, I would like to afford them or I would like to help them. But that's not together exactly.

[92:31]

Initially, then that's a karmic thought. If you see if it's just an inclination and you don't think there's an author of it, it's not a karmic thought. but there's no kind of identification of the actor to it then that inclination is not evolutionary it's just a manifestation of a wholesome state of consciousness it's good but it's not an action oriented thought because you don't think I'm going to do it you just think what a lovely thought thinking of helping people what a pleasant thing to sit here and think of helping people think of benefiting people so pleasant But to connect the actor to it, then it's like, I authored this thought.

[93:32]

I'm going to do it. Then it's positive karma. So the funny thing is, according to what I'm saying, is that just thinking that a lovely thought, in a sense, is an evolutionary. It's like you're there, actually. You don't need to go anywhere. You're okay. You're a success. You're a happy person. But to think you need to do something about that, that will have a positive evolutionary effect on you. So in a sense, the Buddha isn't evolving anymore. The Buddha just has all these beneficent thoughts, but the Buddha doesn't think, well, I'm going to do these things. However, the Buddha does do these beneficent things, but the Buddha is not thinking, I do them. So the Buddha is just fruit, you see, the fruit of happiness and beneficent activity, but no longer involved in undoing the beneficent activity. So if you keep doing beneficent activity, in that realm, you're still in the realm of delusion to do it, You push yourself up to the state of becoming that activity rather than you're doing it. So the activity is still there.

[94:33]

The good deed is still there, but it's not done by you. And it's, in a sense, you don't need to evolve anymore then. That's the fruit of the path. You're just a place where all this beneficent activity comes up without taking any credit for it. No, it's not karma. It's just good deeds, good deeds, good deeds. If you haven't overcome your dualistic thinking, then doing good, then your dualistic thinking gets applied to beneficent deeds, and then you evolve to a place where you don't need to apply yourself to the beneficent deeds, but they just happen. And they'll probably happen more often than two. Plus there'll be no slipping back into cruelty, which you do. And cruelties don't happen to critique the people who are free from dualistic thinking.

[95:35]

I say that, but tomorrow morning maybe somebody can come and show me, we've got somebody here, they're free of dualistic thinking, they did a cruel thing. Okay, well, I don't know about that. Of course, the one great koan in Zen, which is about this, is the Zen master supposedly cut a cat in order to teach. That's one kind of like, what happened there? Is it possible to harm a cat to teach the Dharma? So there are some tricky examples of that. Not tricky exactly, but painful examples where we're not sure, where it looks like maybe somebody who was enlightened did something which is almost always unwholesome. And it didn't seem necessary that the cat wasn't about to kill 20 people or something. So there are some difficult cases, actually, of this, but the basic thing is that from such a person that's free of realistic, generally speaking, we have enlightened, helpful activity that's continuously arising in that area.

[96:44]

So are you saying that someone's free of realistic activity, by definition, compassion is there? Because doesn't compassion have to be immediate for The arhat is free of dualistic activity. They may not have great compassion, but they won't be harmful. I'm hesitant to bring this up, but in that class, bringing up those beings who have understood no self. Yes, like an arhat could be. I got the sense of what you were saying that if compassion wasn't there, they could do No, no. It won't do harm. It's that, for example, if people are doing bad things over there, they won't necessarily even go over there. They won't do any harm, but they might allow harm to happen.

[97:46]

These people can be socially irrelevant. They can let horrendous things happen, and maybe they won't go over there and and stop it. They might. I'm not saying they never will. But basically, they're free of duality, so they're also not bothered by people anymore. In a sense, they aren't bothered by bad things across the street. Maybe. This could happen. But they basically wouldn't be bothered. And they're free of duality. They realize no self, but they might not go over into a worsening And in fact, it's a little complicated because Buddha advised his monks to stay away from war scenes, stay away from bars, stay away from women. And you say, well, they're under training, okay? But after their arhats, did they then go into bars and stuff?

[98:52]

Well, almost no examples in the history of Buddhism where arhats then start hanging around in a bar to spend time with women or going to war scenes. Now, the Buddha himself was asked to stop a charging army, and he did go and sit there, and he did stop it. But then they asked him to stop it a second time, and he didn't do it, because you could see he couldn't stop it. But the Buddha, you know, the Buddha was a Buddha, you see. The Buddha wasn't just an arhat. The Buddha was a social activist. He did have great compassion. So he did go into some difficult situations. He hung out with kings. So he told most of his monks, don't hang out with those kings. You're not a Buddha. Stay away. He told them that, but some of them felt that way anyway. So I'm saying it's possible for a person to have a real emancipation, a salvation of their soul, and be a content at heart, and not afraid of people anymore, and not care about getting anything for themselves. Just to be a happy living being, be free of all that, but not be concerned socially.

[99:56]

And all the people he hangs out with who also are doing this practice, he might not care if they have any social effect on people who are doing all kinds of painful, unhealthy things. That can happen. I'm not saying they're going to do harmful things. But that's not a Buddha. A Buddha wants to help all those people. He gradually finds a way to help them. That would be their following. And when that compassion is fully developed, and you put that together with this wisdom, and you've got a Buddha. It doesn't mean a Buddha's job is done, it just means you've got a Buddha. A Buddha might keep working, and a Buddha might even die and not come back, but set up a whole bunch of disciples' work to finish the job. So the great compassion is not necessarily connected to this insight. So there are some beings I'm proposing that are free of karma, that are not socially engaged.

[100:59]

That can happen. And there are beings who are free of karma that are socially engaged, and of course there's beings who aren't free of karma who are socially engaged. And there's also beings who aren't free of karma who aren't socially engaged. So, you know, there's all these different possibilities. That's right. It's not just takes place in the small world, it takes place for an individual. It isn't like you get reborn as two people.

[102:09]

Generalized consciousness? I don't know what you mean by generalized consciousness. Yes. It's not generalized. You should use the term of it's not associated with a living being anymore. But it's very particular because it's the consciousness which is the result of a living being. It's connected to every particular act that that being did. It's all registered in this consciousness. When I say it, it's all the information there of the person's total history is in that consciousness. That's the shape of the consciousness. It's very particular. Well, it's not so much located, again, it hooks in.

[103:16]

It hooks into a physical base, and then the physical base disperses, so it loses its mooring, loses its connection, and floats away from being connected to a particular body. The body's still laying on the floor, in the casket or whatever, but the consciousness is no longer hooked onto that body. It splits the body. And the other elements, the other mental factors, like perception and feeling, are no longer there either. If I was kind of dispersed, and the consciousness, which is now a different kind of consciousness because it changes when it's not connected to these things, it goes off. But the shape of the consciousness goes off and it causes this series of transmissions until it gets hooked to a body again. And the way it gets hooked to the body is related to its shape. That's called rebirth.

[104:20]

So would someone say, I know a You mean if Dana had a baby, is there any chance that she could tell that the baby was a bird? What do you mean? Well, unless I'm not a bird, that's not another bird. Sorry, Dana. Anyway, let's say you lost a brother, and then you had a child, or your child had a child.

[105:36]

Is it possible you could recognize your brother in that child? Definitely. And the question is, although you definitely could recognize your brother in the offspring of, for example, your son's child, you might be wrong. And then you have to verify that somehow. Okay. In any way, you say, I think that's my brother. He died, you know. on November 13th, and now we know that you can see on December 15th that the baby was born in September. Is there a time frame? Yeah. These things don't hang around indefinitely. The rebirthing impulse does not float around forever. It takes, at maximum, 49 days. It can be right away or after 49 days.

[106:40]

So in that time zone, he knows what you've got. So if Suzuki Roshi is reborn in this world, he would be about 24 years old now. So some 24-year-old, huh? What about the soul? What soul? What do you mean by soul? This is the soul, this thing. The soul is what you've got. You've got a soul in you right now. What's the soul? The soul is... the thing that's in you that's the result of the dependent core rising of the universe as you. That's your soul. Okay? When you die, that whatever's left over from you, which is also the result of how the whole universe has made your life into the practice it was, and now into whatever's left over, that's your soul. The soul is what you could say. That's what I'm calling soul there. That's what stimulates birth. The soul is the total impression of your entire existence and your relationship with everything.

[107:41]

There seem to be so many more people now on this earth. Yeah, Gurdjieff has a theory about that. But I'll mention that in a second, okay? Just remind me. So, you could recognize, you might recognize, your son might have a child. Or not even necessarily your son. It could be a friend's kids had a son. Next week, you know, and you just let your brother die and then a friend of yours kid has a baby. And you see the baby and say, that's my brother. How do you know? It just reminds me of my brother so much, you know? But of course, you can't question him yet because he can't talk. So when he gets to be one or so, in a gentle way, you start asking some questions. And you say, are you my brother? And he says, uh-huh. Beverly, darling. He knows your name. So what school did we go to? And the kid can barely say, you know, Hamilton High School. But when it can say Hamilton, it says Hamilton High School.

[108:44]

And were you older than me or younger than you? Beverly, come on. I'm six months and one year older than you. I was born on July 13, 1927 or something. Beverly. Okay. Can I hold you, Beverly? Anyway, he can tell you. He can tell you. He knows, kind of. He remembers. Especially when they're first born in heaven. They oftentimes can remember really well. Especially if you, like, say hi, you know, they can remember you. So if you remember him and he doesn't remember you, it still might be your brother, but it's particularly confirming when they actually know your name and can tell you their history. It really happens? It really happens. And then do they lose it as they get older? Give me. If nobody calls them and calls them on it, you know, and nobody says, you know, hi, Ralph, you know, and they can't see their sister or whatever it is, they lose it, especially when nobody asks them about it, especially when they start talking about it, people say nonsense.

[109:47]

But if you ask the kid, if you already sense who it is, and you ask them, you know, don't give them any answers, but just ask them some questions, you know, and they tell you, then you kind of know it. But a lot of times they do lose it, and we tell them, we don't encourage it, so they learn not to talk about it. But if you say to little kids, where did you come from? Sometimes they have very interesting things to say, you know, if you catch them early. And, of course, individuals vary according to their recall. But it hasn't been that long, and they do recall, because, you know, it hasn't been that long. They do actually recall something sometimes. Now, that doesn't mean that every kid is reborn. It just means that there's evidence in some cases. Now, whether the other cases are so that they just, you know, you couldn't find a person who kind of like could spark their memory by showing them the face of their sister, you know, a year, two and a half years later, whatever it is, and asking them questions, which you don't give them the answer, but you give them a chance, you know, by asking a question that you know your brother would know.

[110:59]

that this is how this happens, and these are cases where there's evidence. Like that story in that recent Tricycle magazine, this kid was born with a mock at his neck, birthmark, and as soon as he could talk, and he just happened to be born to his brother. His brother happened to be his father. This doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does. So he was reborn as his brother's son. So as soon as he started talking, he said, Hi, brother. And his brother said, who are you? He said, I'm so-and-so. But the fact that they grew up in a culture where they accept reincarnation or accept rebirth is actually part of the reason why there's no mileage for this kid to make this up because people there weren't impressed. It wasn't like, oh, I'm getting a lot of people, you know, I'm getting on TV and stuff for that.

[112:02]

This did not get spread around. This kid didn't get any mileage out of this. It's kind of like, oh, and actually this kid was the rebirth of a brother who had committed the murder, and that's that he died by being hung. Birthmark. They were not particularly happy to have this guy back. Poor kid. He wasn't like... Oh, my precious teacher. Oh, my precious teacher. And then they start bringing all these toys, you know, video games and stuff for this little llama. It was like, oh, this creep came back. Very embarrassing. What are we going to do with the murderer? Now he's reborn again. Hanging is not enough. But this guy was ashamed. And as soon as he could, as soon as he could walk and graduate from kindergarten or whatever it was, he wanted to go, he went and he became a servant to the family of the person he killed. He killed his wife, I think. He killed his wife, and he went, and maybe his family encouraged him, but I think the idea was he wanted to go back, wanted to go and be a servant of the family whose daughter he had killed, who happened to be his wife, I think.

[113:09]

He wanted to do that, and people let him, in that culture, they say, yeah, that makes sense, go do that. And, of course, they asked him questions. He didn't say, hi, brother. He proved that he was a brother, and then after he proved he was a brother, he wanted to give his life, his service, to recompense for the murder he committed. So that's evidence for rebirth. It's evidence, it doesn't prove it, but it's evidence in that direction, I would say. And if you saw it with your brother, if your brother died, and at the right time zone he was reborn, either as your son or as somebody else's son, And you talk to them, and he told you these answers. You might be impressed. You might be convinced. You might realize you're talking to the same person. You might be able to ask him questions which you know only your brother would know. And you get that answer back. That might convince you, once and for all, that he was at least a reincarnation.

[114:09]

But that doesn't mean, that wouldn't prove that everybody would. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I don't think you should do what he called inductive reasoning from this kind of thing. But anyway, this kind of thing does happen. Has happened. Pardon? No, no, no, that's not true. Buddha doesn't say everyone's reborn. I never heard Buddha say that everyone's reborn. Buddha said there is rebirth. He himself saw his passion as and he could use some other people's last life, but he didn't say everybody's reborn. I didn't hear him say that. He said there is rebirth, but not necessarily that everybody is going to be reborn and not necessarily that everybody is a rebirth. He just said there is rebirth. It is an important factor. What percentage of people are involved in it, he didn't make a statement. I didn't hear him say, I haven't seen it written, but he said everybody is reborn and everybody will be reborn because

[115:11]

The world is more complicated than that. It's more complicated. This is like a small-scale version of what's going on, right? This is like a little tiny trip. And some people are not reborn. Buddha finally was not reborn. So you can pop out of this system entirely. Our hearts are not reborn. So this is a little deluded system. This isn't like the reality world. This is a delusion world. And when you get into that world, you can get out sometimes, like flat out. And not everything goes into that world. It's just talking about, there is a world like that, and that's the world Buddha was particularly addressing. People are trapped in that world of birth and death. The world of birth and death is also the world. It's cyclic birth and death. It's not just one birth and one death. That's not the problem. If there is such a thing as one birth and one death, fine. Those people are wrong. They're going to be gone pretty soon.

[116:11]

We're talking about people who've got a bigger problem to deal with. They're in a longer-term prison. That's what Buddha was concerned about. But we should stop so you can go to digest this a little bit. Okay? You asked a question about proximity and balance. Julia did? What's the question? Would it normally happen within a relative? Usually, it often does occur nearby, but it often goes far, far away, way across the ocean. Are we meeting back here tonight? We're meeting here. And there'll be some other people in the room, I'm probably. As generating and perfect Dharma, it is entirely met with even a hundred thousand million Kalpas.

[117:30]

At A60 and listening to, to remember and accept, I bow to face the truth of other Thakita's words. Sorry to be a little late. On the way here, I stopped for a little while to visit Galen because her old cat just passed over. She's sitting here with her cat. Could you turn the lights down a little bit, Stuart? Could you turn the lights down, please, Stuart?

[118:31]

Thank you. Did you hear me say, Christina, that Galen's cat died? What? You thought maybe other people didn't? Did you hear me coming? In what we now say is the first talk of the Buddha, the first formal discourse by the Buddha, which we call turning the wheel of Dharma, or setting the wheel of Dharma into motion, the Buddha said that

[120:45]

There are two views that he did not encourage his students to hold. One view is the view of existence. And the other view is the view of non-existence. He encouraged a view which steers clear of these two extremes, which he called the middle way. And he said that the middle way, which doesn't veer into the extreme view of existence and doesn't veer into the extreme view of non-existence, this middle way is the path, is the way of living which is freedom and peace and happiness.

[122:34]

And this middle way he sometimes described, as he did in the first scripture, in his first discourse, he described the middle way in terms of an eightfold noble path, which is comprehensive view, comprehensive comprehensive thinking, comprehensive speech, comprehensive action, comprehensive livelihood, comprehensive effort, comprehensive mindfulness, and comprehensive concentration. This is an eightfold version of the Middle Way. This week we've been concentrating particularly on the comprehensive view and comprehensive thinking in this retreat which is studying karma and rebirth.

[124:24]

Because the beginning of the practice of right view is meditation on karma. The view is receiving the instruction and meditating on the instruction that karmic activity has results, has consequences. Karmic activity brings fruits. And we've been studying the mechanisms and the workings of the process of karma.

[125:32]

We've also been talking about, although I didn't speak of it directly as such, right effort. Maybe I did. And right effort is the beginning attitude with which we can successfully study the karmic activity. I mean, the actual course of study of the Middle Way, the beginning, of actually applying our attention is to start watching what we're doing. To start paying attention to any karmic activity that is being perpetrated by us. Or to put it slightly differently, it's to become aware and pay attention to our

[126:43]

our understanding or our belief that we, that I, that we individuals can do something to see if you hold such a view that you personally can do something by yourself. And if you hold such a view that you can do things, and if you also notice that you think others can do things, then the beginning of the meditation is to watch how it is that you think, that you understand that you are doing things, and what is it that you're doing. Ultimately, as this meditation on what I am doing in your meditation on what you're doing, or what I think I'm doing, or how I think and how my thinking turns into doing, watching all this and much more eventually sets me free from that way of seeing of life in terms of I do things which have results.

[127:59]

And the results come back to the author of the results, of the actions. how that all works, studying that thoroughly, one becomes free of that process. That's the proposal that that turns into the middle way, that kind of study. When we first begin to study our activity, we may not be clear, we may not be able to see clearly what our view is. what we believe we are and how we think we're acting. It may be not clear to us. And also, we may have difficulty sustaining our meditation on what we're doing. During this workshop, during this retreat and other times, people have said how difficult it is to watch what we're doing. It is sometimes very difficult to sustain the concentration on that just because it's hard to concentrate on anything sometimes.

[129:12]

But also what we see when we look is sometimes horrible. And we want to look away. Maybe. It's hard anyway to see what we're doing sometimes. So at the beginning it may be quite rough, this meditation. But based on this meditation, then we move into right intention or right thinking. And actually when we meditate on karma, what we're meditating on partly is our thinking, because thinking is the source of karma. Thinking is the basic kind of karma. Thinking is the definition of karma, and the source of karma.

[130:17]

As we watch our thinking and see how it works, and see what it leads to, and watch how our thinking gets ramified into speech and posture, as we see how that goes, we gradually our thinking starts to change, we start to see that it would be good if our thinking was along the lines of detachment, loving-kindness, and harmlessness. Then we try to let that intention, that kind of thinking, that harmless, non-clinging, loving-kindness type of thinking to extend itself into our speech, into our postures, and into our livelihood. Then we're ready to practice right effort, and right effort is basically to

[131:26]

let our mind function, to let our awareness function at the level of what's given without adding or subtracting anything to it. I heard an interesting example today of this. Someone told me that he had a vision, that he was a rock. or a big stone. And there was some difficulty about how to deal with this vision. But the language I heard this reported in was, I had a vision of it. And what I felt was it would be good to change the meditation into take away the I and the it and just have the vision.

[132:36]

I imagined myself as a stone. Take away the it out there and the self here and just have the image. without somebody having the image. So that the imagined thing is just the imagined thing, and there's nothing more going on than that. This is right effort, and this is the way to really start getting intimate with the right view of studying karma. So then if you see that there is this thing, there's this thing imagined. What's imagined? An entity, an actor, something by itself, something we imag... There's an imagination, I said we, but there is an imagination of something that's by itself and it has the authorial power

[133:48]

act. It can do something by itself. With that imagination, just being that imagination, then you can see very clearly how this imagined thing, which is imagined as isolated and by itself, then by that very independence, thinks it can act by itself. And that is karma. And the imagined act, the act which follows from the imagined entity, comes back to the entity. Or the act which is authored by an isolated thing comes back to the isolated author. So, what is it?

[135:06]

Dogen Zenji said, you know, when Dharma fills your body and mind, you know, when Dharma doesn't fill your body and mind, you think that it's already sufficient. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something's missing. When Dharma doesn't fill our body and mind, we think that our picture, the world we see ourselves living in, we think that's the world. When Dharma fills our body and mind, we sense that something's missing. We don't know how much, but it might be quite a bit. So the Buddha taught that because of the, you know, in the world of, not the world, but in the Dharma world, there is no birth and death.

[136:20]

There are no things that come and go. There is life, but life is not something that's born and dying there. the birth and death occur in the world which we make by our imagination and take as real. And it hurts for this real world to be born and die. We turn away from the Dharma world Life is such that some living beings who are not things can imagine that they're things. Life is so wonderful that it allows some living beings who are not things, who are not isolated from other living beings, it lets them imagine something that isn't happening.

[137:31]

The Dharma world does not stop you and I from imagining that we're separate. It lets us think such a thought. It lets us imagine our independence. And it lets us imagine our interdependence, too. It lets us imagine what's happening, make an image of what's happening, and it lets us make an image of what's not happening. Our image of interdependence is not interdependence, it's an image of it. But our image of independence is what independence is. Independence is no more than our image of it. Our imagination of independence is all there is to independence.

[138:39]

Our fantasy of independence is all there is to independence. Independence has no more to it than that. Except that when we believe that it's true and think that it's sufficient unto itself, we suffer. If we think that our image of interdependence is really interdependence, this is also a problem. Interdependence is more than our image of it, but independence is no more than our image of it. And we are loud. Life is so kind, it lets us be deluded. It lets us imagine something that isn't true, and lets us think it's true. Based on the illusion of our independence, and based on our belief in the reality of that, we then can conjure up, by the power of our independence, by the illusory power of our independence, illusory actions.

[139:53]

And we collect the pain of that illusory process. if we can study this and let the illusion be an illusion, if we can let the imagined be the imagined, and let the actions which are conjured up based on this illusion be what they are, and let the results be what they are, then we will not identify with the imagined or disidentified with the imagined. It will not be I over here who have the imagined. The imagined is just the imagined. I will not do this. I will not be located in the imagined. There will be no here or there or in between. And this would mean the end of suffering in this process, which is the process of ignorance, looking away from reality, imagining independence,

[141:07]

acting upon that illusion, and suffering the results. And when we suffer the results, when we feel the pain of the results, we then react to that by either just letting the pain of the results be the pain of the results, and not identifying with it, or we react to it by saying, this entity will do something about it in creating more karma and driving it around again. That's the two ways of responding. Maybe there's more than two. But those are two ways that I brought up now. So I picture a world of life that is infinite. a living world that does not arise or fall, a world of life that is not born and does not die, but has living beings in it who have no independent existence.

[142:21]

And I picture that we have the ability, which most of us have used, we have the option, which most of us have taken of ignoring this infinite life of the Dharma world where we don't get born and die, where there's none of us as individual entities. We've turned away from that for various reasons, for various conditions. We've ignored that. And by ignoring that world, we've been able to get by with imagining that there is a limited person here who is not connected to anybody else. And that ignorance is the rise of karma, and karma then drives the whole process of consciousness, which gets warped and changed to accord with the ignorance and the karma

[143:31]

The consciousness then gives rise to a dualistic field which surrounds it, which then gives rise to very strong sensations, all of which are based on ignorance, karma and dualistic consciousness. So then when we meet these sensations, it's very difficult for us not to crave pleasure, or crave the end of pain, or at least crave existence. And then it's very difficult because of karma, because we respond to these situations, these difficult situations, these intense situations with our power of karma. Very difficult for us not to grasp. And then grasping, it's very difficult for us not to want to expand and increase that grasping and become. And then there's birth in this field. And then there's growing older, there's sickness. And because this whole thing is driven by ignorance, it's going all through the whole process.

[144:38]

Then after death, there's more ignorance, which leads to more karma. And this whole process is occurring in a vast sea of life. So this whole process can draw on life and suck life down into it and use life to give birth and death, birth and death. Meantime, life's completely surrounding it, offering itself. The Dharma is offering itself to be misused, to be twisted, limited, demeaned, and tortured. But also studied, left alone, and liberated. And then the Dharma can come streaming back in without changing anything. That's a story. And Galen's now dealing with, in this world, that we individually, together, create in this world.

[145:48]

Her cat has now died and she suffers with this and wonders, what is the best wish? What is the best response to the death of something which was born in this world? How do we take care of this death? What do we hope for the spirit of the cat? What's realistic? What's compassionate? Meditating on karma is, I guess, for most of us, most of us has been at certain times very difficult, maybe still is difficult.

[147:21]

Keeping the mind at this level of not adding anything more to what's given is a way that makes it not so painful to meditate on what we're up to. So, This meditation on karma is not a calming meditation. It is an insight meditation and can be quite disturbing. So in order to meditate on your karma, you may have to do a collateral calming meditation, or this right effort type of meditation, so that you don't... so the meditation does not get you too upset. Because if you get too upset watching your karma, You can't see it. So if you're getting too upset and too disgusted and it's getting too difficult, then it's time to rest and just follow your breathing for a while. Or work on your posture. Or bring your mind to this very simple wall-like presence.

[148:30]

See if you can settle down before looking specifically. at this illusory world of you, all by yourself, powerfully doing things in this world and collecting the results and causing effects all over the place. And if you can meditate on that calmly and clearly, this becomes right effort and moves into right mindfulness. And in right mindfulness, the the conditions, you start to see how the ignorance conditions the karma, and the karma conditions the consciousness, and so on. You start to see how this process works. The dharma of this world of birth and death starts to come forth. The dharma of the pain starts to come forth. And as the mindfulness starts to reveal more

[149:34]

then you start to develop continuity in this meditation by practicing concentration. So this is a short tour of the Eightfold Path, and emphasizing particularly that the focus of this whole study is on the illusion of personal identity and action and result, and the dependent co-arising of birth and death. And I guess that the people who just come in here this evening and haven't been in the workshop, this may be a tremendous amount of material, very dense for you, but I hope it's all right. It's kind of a summary of the middle way in actual working form. And this is supposedly the way that we can avoid the extremes that this world of birth and death exists, or this world of birth and death does not exist.

[150:42]

It's not really either one of those. It's not that the world of birth and death exists, it's not that the world of birth and death doesn't exist, it's that the world of birth and death dependently co-arises. It does, there is a dependently co-arising But since it's dependently co-arisen, it doesn't exist or not exist. What we need to be able to see is how does birth and death dependently co-arise? And how are we personally, to our own understanding, generating our own personal version of this cycle? This is what the Buddha did, and he thought we could do it too, so he said it. He asked us to do it just like he did it. So that's probably enough.

[151:50]

Do you have anything you'd like to say before we rejoin? Linda? I'm sorry, you just sort of How we personally, I don't know what I said, but how we personally, how we imagine ourselves as person and how we imagine this person is cut off and how we imagine this cut off person because of their independence, have independent power to act and then how we do act. And then what are the results? And then how do the results affect this person? And then how do we respond when these thoughts affect the person? Do we then have the power response again and do more karma and generate more results which come back to us? Or do we start meditating on how this is going? Or do we do both and continue the karmic cycle but meditate while we're doing it?

[152:55]

I mean... I could imagine that you could answer that question about where you stand on that. Are you driving karma around? Or not? If you are, are you meditating on it or not? If you're meditating on it, how? Martha? This baths down the world... You have faith in it. It's something that's beyond... I have faith in that, right? That's my faith. And you know, although it's my faith, I've also been reasoning about it, and it makes sense to me. It's reasonable. And actually, to some extent, although some parts of that, some of the implications of this may not be reasonable to people, a lot of people think it's reasonable that we're interdependent. But even though they think it's reasonable, they don't really believe it.

[154:05]

What they believe is that we're independent. And that's because they have the habit of looking away from this radiant interdependence and making something small out of it. Bringing it down to something we can know. We have this strong habit. So we really believe that. Because we know, in fact, we know we can imagine that. It's true. We can imagine that the world is this tiny little thing that we can conceive of. So even if in reasoning, in science and all of our discussions and all of our talk, even though it's reasonable that that world's so, we still actually have this ability to make it small, to bring it down and to make an image of it and to work with that image. And we have come to believe that. But to me, it makes sense that we would respond, given our history as animals and so on, that we would respond to this useless vastness with something small that we could move.

[155:15]

And I don't criticize us for doing that because I think that vastness has allowed us to do that. There's some lawfulness in the fact that we make it small and play with it and can be powerful with it. There's something about that that's not bad. It's just that it's painful, but if we could understand it, I think we'd be all set. But it's hard to understand it, right? It's hard to study it. It's easier just to sort of, like, work it without paying attention and just enjoy the ride even though it's painful. Because although it's painful, at least we have power. Whereas the other way, we have love But what can we do? Nothing. We just enjoy it. All right.

[156:38]

I don't know if that's the middle way or if that balance is a good attitude to have to study the middle way. Maybe it's the middle way, but maybe it's the middle way of studying, or it's a balanced way of studying. So if the middle way is the Eightfold Path, then what you're bringing up, I think, is part of the Eightfold Path So maybe what you're bringing up is a part of the unfoldment of the middle way. But maybe not the whole middle way. But what you're bringing up is part of the meditation which comprises the middle way. You might think about where it fits in those eight Well, or maybe it's more than one, maybe.

[158:16]

How does it fit with the Eightfold Path? You might think about how that works. I think it does. Anything else tonight? Yes? So if there's no individual in anything independent, how do we get anything done? Well, first of all, it's not so much that there's no individual. That would be taking the view of non-existence, like there isn't an individual. So that would be an extreme view to say there is no individual. So Buddha didn't say there's no individual. To say there is an individual would be the other extreme. Okay? What he said was the individual dependently co-arises. It appears by various conditions. One of the conditions is don't look... Also, individual is different from the substantial independent self.

[159:30]

It's a little bit different. But either one, it's not that there are individuals or aren't individuals, but there is the appearance there is an appearance of individuals that does happen. Okay? The Buddha didn't say that didn't happen. It does happen. But an individual, to see an individual or to sense an individual, which is brought to us by many conditions, that's one event. Now, there's another event that can happen, is you can then say that individual is isolated from other individuals. You can say that, too. That's another step. And then you can say that isolation is a fact. Okay? And then you're getting back into saying that it exists. And it exists independent. Again, actually, when you say something exists, in fact, you are saying it's independent.

[160:33]

Because if you recognize how it arises and how it's dependent on other things, it doesn't exist by itself. So you have to ignore what makes possible the appearance of an individual. And then the individual exists. So then you're off into that extreme. If you pretend like individuals don't exist, you're just ignoring the fact that they do dependently colorize. There is an appearance of individuals. But you need certain ingredients for an individual to appear. You don't have to ignore interdependence to see an individual. Interdependence can create the appearance of an individual. But the individual that's created in the field of interdependence is not isolated. It is an individual that depends on everything else. So you wouldn't say it existed. This individual, which is supported by everything, can act. Activity can be done by such an individual. But the activity is not karma.

[161:36]

because it's not a self-existing individual. It's an individual which is working in concert with everything. So there's activity, but it's not personal activity. It's not karma. Therefore, it doesn't lead to suffering. It doesn't lead to birth and death. It just leads to activity, and that's it. This is Buddha's act. This is the way a Buddha behaves. A Buddha acts. A Buddha has an activity. the Buddha's activity is just interdependent activity. And it can be the interdependent activity of an individual, but the activity and the individual do not have independent existence. If I think, or you think, if you look at an individual and you see it cut off, and you see activity at the place of that individual who's cut off, who exists by itself, then that's karma. And that drives that process round and round perpetually.

[162:39]

There's an individual that you see how the individual arises. And then you see how the activity of the dependently co-arisen individual arises. This is Buddha's activity. It's not karma. It's not cyclic. And it doesn't drive birth and death. It isn't born. It doesn't die. It is eternal life. But If we can meditate, if we're still caught in birth and death, and we can meditate on how we believe that an individual person does karma, if you can watch that clearly and just let that individual person be that individual person, and let the karma be that karma, and let it affect, you can see that the only way they can be that way is because they're not that way. The same place where this karmic show is happening, you can see that the only way it can be the way it is is because it depends on everything else. And you'll see the interdependence of the very thing which you thought was isolated. And then you'll see Buddha right in front of you, acting right in front of you.

[163:45]

So you don't have to try to push the karmic world away. As a matter of fact, Buddha did not say push the karmic world away. He said, let the karmic world be just the karmic world. and then you want to identify with it or disidentify with it. Letting the individual self be the individual self is letting the imagined be the imagined. You're subtracting. That's the end of the suffering caused by that cycle. Not only does it end the suffering, but it opens the Dharma eyes and lets this inconceivable light into the space. And now, having been able to stand looking at karma, you maybe have a chance to stand looking at Dharma. Harm is difficult to look at. In developing patience, looking at this difficult, painful show of birth and death, now you have a chance of being able to look at the fact that birth and death doesn't happen and have the patience, as we say, to tolerate the fact that nothing happens, that things don't come up and go away.

[165:06]

So if we can build our patience looking at how things do come up and go away, we have a chance of seeing that things don't. If we can't stand to watch how things of birth and death do seem to happen, we can't watch the dependent core rising of our life and death. We can't watch the dependent core rising of our individuality and our karma. If we can't watch that, then our chances of watching the actual Dharma are not too good. So we work our way up through watching the world of cyclic misery and birth and death and learning how to meditate on that with the proper balance, eightfold path. And if we can watch this show, we now we could become liberated from it and then hopefully we can stand liberation, which is, you know, it wasn't so easy to stand. That's why we copped out and started ignoring it and started this whole show.

[166:08]

And the show led us. So I say, go right ahead. You guys, all you guys, you can imagine what actually isn't happening. You can do that. There really is. There really is. We really are allowed and it is actually happening. We can imagine what's not happening. That's allowed. And it's constant, pretty much. It's imagination of what doesn't exist. Okay? And all that, you say that if you can actually watch karma, then perhaps you can see dharma. Are you separating those two, or is that realistic? They're not separating the two. If you can watch karma, watching the karma turns the wheel of dharma. Same thing. It's just that sometimes if you look at karma and you don't look at the whole picture of karma, you can't see the dharma.

[167:15]

But if you just keep studying karma, gradually you'll notice there's a little dharma light in the middle of it. The way karma really is is dharma. Karma really is just an imagined thing. But you can't say, OK, it's imagined and then not recognize that you think it's true and it hurts. If you can get a steady, stable, gentle, patient, you know, so on meditation on karma, we will see dharma right there. It's right in the middle of the karma. And prior to seeing the dharma, still meditating on karma is starting the dharma wheel turning. We're getting in gear here. Eightfold paths, when you first start studying eightfold paths, you're studying karma, but you haven't yet cleared your vision. So you're studying it somewhat, you know, it's the beginning path. At the end of the Eightfold Path, now you can see and study karma really clearly and see how it is. So you have to go around it sort of once before now, the second time through, your vision will be more clear and you can see how this karma really works.

[168:25]

But without a steady, bright and relaxed vision of karma, it's a little foggy and we can't see the Dharma there. Isn't it? We're having a hard time. But the people on retreat, they haven't quit yet. Some of them actually say that they have to leave early. So, I don't know. I guess the hard part is to stay through to the end. That's the hard part. It's hard. But... That's what we have these bodhisattva vows for, right? Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them all. Does that give you goosebumps?

[169:16]

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