This morning I'd like to continue to talk about this right view and the laws of karma Now this next point I'd like to raise has tremendous complication involved in it, but I'm just going to present a simple version of it, and that is that there is this teaching in the Abhidharmakosha which says that when when there's an action, there is arising with that action some information or not.

[01:07]

There is some like cognizable ... you can cognize and what people are doing, or you can't. You can recognize what they're doing or not. There's information being given off or not. So mental karma does not have information coming up with it, whereas physical karma and vocal karma does. Pardon? Always? I think, well actually strictly speaking, I think maybe neutral physical karma isn't so informative and neutral vocal karma is not informative, but unwholesome vocalizations and wholesome vocalizations give the information of unwholesome and wholesome, unwholesome physical actions

[02:30]

and wholesome physical actions give that information, but unwholesome thoughts do not give that information. Yes? When you say neutral, is there a category of neutral or is it indeterminate? It's indeterminate, you can't tell, it's not clear. And the basic definition of karma is … I'll just teach the Sanskrit word chetana which could be translated as, in the Chinese characters, that character I've taught you, rice field over mind, and it's called sometimes volition, will, intention, but also it could be called, this character also is a character used for thinking. Like when they say shiryo, this is the shi in shiryo, you know, like when they say in Japanese shiryo for like thinking, not thinking, shi-ryo, fu-shi-ryo, this is the shi.

[03:32]

And the other character of ryo means measure, so thinking and measuring is a compound they use for thinking. So this could be will, thinking and so on. It's the overall pattern of a moment of experience, of a conscious experience. So, when there is a moment of the mind has a tendency an inclination, a volition, a tendency, a direction and so on, that is the karma of that person, the one who believes in their independent action, that then defines the type of action they're doing. If it's unwholesome it's going in an unwholesome direction, if it's wholesome it's going in a wholesome direction, but there's no information for that kind of mental However, if I put it into words, if it's put into words or into body, then information comes up. And that information, the Sanskrit word for it is vijnapti, vijnapti.

[04:43]

It means information or cognizable, informative, and non-cognizable. accompaniment of the karma is avijñapti. So with mental karma there arises an avijñapti and with physical and vocal karma there arises a vijnapti. The physical and vocal acts are vijnapti, okay, they are information, but what arises with them is an avijnapti. Simultaneously. Pardon? Simultaneously. Simultaneously. And the avijnapti is an information which cannot ... it's not information, it's non-information but it is something, but it is not informative.

[05:56]

And the key thing here in this theory is that this abhijnapti is actually like a physical thing, just like the body which is now influenced by volition is a physical thing and the voice is a physical thing, influenced by volition. This non-informative, non-informational entity is not nothing, it's just that it's not informing anybody. But it actually has a substance, a subtle physical reality, or a subtle reality like a physical reality, except it's not physical, it's not classified under the first skanda, the rupa skanda, it's not classified there, and it takes its effect in the realm of objects of mind. Okay, so the upshot of this is that what happens is that if you do physical, informative, physical and vocal actions, there is kind of like a material trace or representation of that which is non-informative, which is in your mind as a result of that.

[07:17]

It's in the field of your mind objects. And that physical thing... is then in your mind and it stays there and grows. So in your mind field, the field of your mind objects, there is this influential structure implanted by virtue of your physical and vocal mind, wholesome and unwholesome. And I think the reason why neutral doesn't count is because neutral doesn't provide any clear structure. So in a sense, the field of your awareness, of what you're aware of, the field of your mind objects gets structured in a sense by your vocal and physical actions. The clear ones, the clearly evil and the clearly good ones, they structure your consciousness. That's the basic idea, which is, you know,

[08:26]

really can be argued about, but anyway, that's the presentation. And then I'll stop there for a second before I go into talking about how some of the important examples of this. I think both Rick and Robert. I have come across the term non-revelatory form. Yeah, I think that's probably it. What book did you read that in? Yeah, that's probably it. Did it say avijñapti? Did it have the Sanskrit? It's probably that. Non-revelatory forms? Yeah, that's probably it. When you make a wish or an aspiration, whether positive or negative, to hurt or help, a non-revelatory form is? That's it. So the volition to harm, there's an avijñapti that arises, a non-revelatory form arises in your mind. If you think of trying to help people, really want to help people, that's the shape of your mind, that's the shape of your thinking, that's the definition of your mental karma at that time, a non-revelatory form arises.

[09:37]

Okay, but actually I just took that back. So, the actual physical side of that only happens, my understanding is that it only happens when you then enact it vocally or physically. Just the thought doesn't have… it has an avijnapti with it but it doesn't produce this avijnapti effect, this karma. It's only the actions of body and speech that do that, which is one of the reasons why it's important, if you ever do anything positive, that you say it and do it with your body because then it will structure your consciousness. Just thinking a good thought has this avijnapti with it but it doesn't have this avijnapti rupa, okay? It has avijnapti but it's the physical unfolding of the intention into voice and posture that make avijnapti rupa make a form which is non-revelatory.

[10:40]

So you might check that to see if they're saying that the thoughts produce it. The Abhidharmakosha doesn't say that. It says there's an avijnavati with the thought that can't be cognized, can't be ... isn't revealed, but the actual physical effect comes with the physical actions. It has an effect anyway. Huh? It has an effect anyway. What has an effect anyway? The avijnavati, the thought. Take Rebecca's example from last night for instance. Yes, it has an effect, but it doesn't have this ... It doesn't have quite as much of an effect. Neither one of them have visible effect. This avijñapti is not a visible effect. You can't see it in any case. But the question is, is it avijñapti or is it avijñapti rūpa? Avijñapti rūpa comes with the clear vocal, good and bad vocal and good and bad physical. So, before you do something physically bad, some physically unwholesome action, you think of doing it mentally beforehand.

[11:43]

It's the first, the volition to do a bad thing, and then it's carried into the body. Or you think of doing a good thing and it's carried into the body, or carried into the voice, either way. When it's carried into these physical and vocal forms, they create this avijñapti rūpa, this uncognizable, non-informative material thing, which is only in the mind. Robert? This may be what you're talking about, but I'm not sure. One person I read included an invisible form which is volition or will as one of the fifteen aspects to the form. Yeah. But it's not actually in this school, it's not listed in the formskanda, it's listed in what's called dharmadhatu, which is the field of things that you're aware of as mental objects. In this school it's not classified, but maybe in the Theravada they put it in the formskanda.

[12:48]

Huh? They put it in the formskanda? Yeah. So they disagree I guess for some reason with the Abhidharmakosha. Abhidharmakosha very specifically says it's not categorized. I'm not sure it's the same. Well, we can check. But anyway, the point is, what's being proposed here, maybe I should just say a little bit more before. So I just, I want to get to the point, sort of the point. The point is that when you take on a discipline, and there's different kinds of disciplines which I'll talk about, but when you take on the discipline which is called Pratimoksha discipline, the discipline of vows of moral conduct, when you actually think of that stuff and then actually say that you're going to do that with your voice and with your body, you do prostrations and so on, and maybe sign a contract or something that you're going to do something, that produces

[13:51]

this positive avijñāpīrūpa. So your mind then has this kind of structural influence in it from that time on and it grows. It's stronger over time. So taking vows structures your mind in a disciplined way or a moral way. So when you take in the precepts it changes the nature of your mind. When you take them in by by saying them and physically committing yourself, in addition to thinking them. And also, if you don't do that, or if you don't do that, then you leave your mind without that kind of influence of taking on moral commitments, and if you take on a commitment to do something opposite, you may not feel like you're doing it formally, but you are doing it formally, when you think and say unwholesome things, you structure your mind in that way. You make a structure in your mind which will not just leave it at random to do whatever according to whatever karmic habits you have, but you then structure it in certain unwholesome directions by your speech and physical action.

[14:59]

Also, you get in trouble for thinking bad thoughts, but they don't structure the mind quite as heavily as if you ramify those thoughts into vocal and physical. What's that trouble like? Pardon? What is that trouble that you get into? Well, just that the mind is sort of like structured and like channeled towards evil action, towards unwholesomeness. Just by thinking? No. You said you get in trouble anyway just by thinking. Well, actually you can see how you get in trouble. That's one of the things you can tell when you think bad thoughts, you get the bad thing right away. You can feel right away what that's like. But when you put it into vocalizations and bodily postures, you cannot tell how much that's going to influence you, because the influence is not right at that moment. You just set up a thing which is now going to influence you indefinitely, and the influence will get stronger over time.

[16:06]

That's the difference. The effect of thinking a bad thought happens pretty much at the same time. You get punished for it right away. You feel bad about it right away, pretty much. But if you ramify it or think it again, then it gets much heavier and grows. So, before I get into the different kinds of discipline, and before I get into that, talking about the necessity of discipline and the difference of the life of having discipline or not, do you have any questions before I start that? I have a two-part question that I can hopefully get to both of them. One is that when Rabbi Liu was here this summer, he did a workshop on Buddhism, and I remember he said that he was It's hard to realize what?

[17:10]

I think he didn't say that, but he started to realize what the spiritual path actually was. Yes. So my question is for the people who have that realization, or for people who are exposed to the teachings, and yet decide that they don't enter it formally, is there that same kind of negative pattern? I didn't quite get the, what do you call it, the point of your question. Is someone who's exposed to the teachings and yet don't go on to make certain formal vows, are they subject to the same negative karmic retribution even if they're practicing another tradition? Do you mean like if you heard about the Bodhisattva vows and then you did what? You didn't take them? Would you be in any trouble for not taking them? The only trouble you'd be in would be just you would miss the opportunity of what it would do for you if you took them. Your mind is then uninfluenced by accepting that discipline.

[18:14]

Your mind is a certain way, okay? Let's just say your mind is in a certain condition. Let's just say that, all right? Is that okay? You look like you don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I know. Okay, so, let's see, how can I put this? that the way things are is some way that you have a mind right now in a certain condition, okay? I can just tell you that you do or I can just say suppose you do, all right? Now that's the condition of your mind, whatever state of spiritual quality that's in, all right? If you have no discipline that you've accepted and committed yourself to then that's your current situation, okay? Now if you don't then take on the numerous types of spiritual disciplines which you could take on, you're not penalized for not taking them on, but in fact you don't get the benefit of any of them that you don't take on, that's all.

[19:20]

If you would say, for example, if you take on a different spiritual discipline of rejecting them though, if you for example would reject the precept of not killing, rather than just not accept it into yourself and say, I vow to practice it. If you would reject that precept, that would have an influence on you, because you'd be forming some kind of commitment to killing, or to not practicing not killing. That would have an effect, but not to pick it up in the first place would leave your mind in its current state. There are innumerable disciplines that one can pick up. There's some similarity between a lot of them, but anyway, I don't think you get penalized for disciplines you don't take up. What you do is you get benefit from the ... you get the relative benefit of the discipline that you do take up. That's all. So, I guess Rabbi Liu saw, oh, I see what precepts I want to take. I don't want to take these Bodhisattva precepts, I want to take a different style of precepts, which I remember from my childhood, but I didn't take, and now I see that those are the ones I want to take, so he went and took them.

[20:29]

Of course, there's some similarity between them, but his own particular heart, spiritual heart, wanted to go in a little bit different direction. That's where I would take it. But I don't think he's in any trouble for not taking the Bodhisattva vows, because I don't think he ever rejected them at all. I think, in fact, in his mind, he probably feels perfectly comfortable with them, but he didn't want to then necessarily ramify them into vocalizations and bodily expressions, and then have that structure his life in a particularly Buddhist way. Because that's what I would guess he's saying. So he just found a home within the structure of what he knows in his mind. He found a structure. I think he found a home that was a little bit more kind of like true to his own spirit, that he could put more energy into, I guess. What's the second part? Um, the second part is, um, the nature of taking a vow, it seems that, um, you can take, for example, a marriage vow.

[21:32]

Yes. And if you do it and you're, like you said, you totally need it. Yes. And I think that's pretty beautiful, it sets up, um, positive karmic waves or whatever. Yes, yes. But, um, if you take a vow without your whole body or mind. Yes. If you find motivation such as, um, fear or conformity or, um, you know, wanting security, I'm not saying at all that that's the case, but if that is the case, and then you take that vow, wouldn't you be setting up negative karmic action for him? Yeah, this is a very important point, and I want to, in some sense, the key point is right there. If I get into that now, that will, then I won't get these next questions, but that type of concern is, is what I'm working up to but I'm sort of building, I'm trying to build some laws of karma in the background so you see how the laws of karma support how there's kind of a lawfulness in our practice, in our way of practice.

[22:37]

So I want to lead up to answering your question but I think maybe I'll just take a few more questions before I get into that and also introduce a little bit more information about this the different kinds of discipline before I go into answering that question fully. But I want to do that. Liz? I was just going to kind of check that what you presented seems to be very similar to one of the readings, the Four Noble Truths by Lobsang. Yeah. Where he was talking about how karma accumulates fully. And he said that if there's only an intention, that you don't go through with the preparation, the performance, and feeling like that was rejoicing, then all the karma doesn't accumulate. So he was kind of expounding. Is that the same thing? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Your stuff, they rubbish it up to, what, into the six, six issues, or one?

[23:43]

No, it doesn't go into the sixth shikhi, the sixth consciousness. When they talk about the mind, discriminating consciousness is an awareness of certain things and the field of awareness is called the dharmadhatu. There are lots of things in there. For example, in terms of the five skandhas, the other four skandhas are a four-fold depiction of what the dharmadhatu is, of what the field of mind objects can be, okay? So it goes into that area of things that mind can be aware of. I have read that it went into the eighth and then informed in the form of triangle back to the sixth and then informed action. The eighth, when it goes into the eighth that way, it goes into the eighth as the eighth then is a field of objects. Okay? Excuse me, the eighth is the field of potential objects, seeds of objects.

[24:49]

When they mature, when the eighth consciousness matures into fully developed phenomena, then there can be objects of consciousness. depending on your comment reaction to that object, when the consciousness is aware of that object and then a comment arises, then that creates a new scene. Yes? Is this structure that your mind takes as a result of speech and actions, is that related to or is that happening as habit energy? Is it like habit energy? Yes, it's like habit energy. Except it's not so much, yeah, it's like it supports habit energy, it supports the energy going, the life going in certain ruts, in certain channels, rather than, yeah, rather than just freely bouncing according to how it would go if you didn't have that kind of karma, those kinds of structures.

[25:52]

It would be more random. And you can structure it wholesomely or unwholesomely. So this is still, this is in the dualistic realm of karma that you're doing these structures, right? Yes. So, this question of unwholesome thought. Yes. So I can see where unwholesome thought or mental karma wouldn't have the same kind of information or be cognizable by another. Yes. As speech or action, but it seems to me that we do sense each other's state. Uh-huh. So what are we sensing? Is it that of a vijnapti? Can that be sensed by another? What are you sensing? You may be sensing the person's thoughts. If a person is thinking an unwholesome thought, they may look kind of unhappy or angry.

[26:56]

Even if you don't what? Save them. Well, I'm not into that. I'm not into that. And I don't think that's possible. Okay. But in Buddhism, the Buddha reads me people's minds by looking at their face and body and what they say. You can read people's minds by the way they look. But it's not that you're reading the mind, it's just that you understand by studying yourself the relationship between facial and physical expressions and verbal expressions. You can tell by that study what actually is going on in the mind. Although you don't actually look in the mind, you know. If you look at your face in the mirror for a long time, you can learn what your face looks like in relationship to your mind. So that's the way the Buddha read people's minds and he could read them very well. But that's the method. The Buddhist teaching is you cannot actually have other people's consciousness, which is also part of the reason why you can't do their karma or be involved in their karma.

[28:09]

Everybody's got their own commitment, but you can read people's minds through their body and voice. If I have a bad thought, and you can read that thought by looking at my face, that's different from me having a bad thought, and me thinking, and me actually doing a physical expression of that bad thought, and wanting to do that physical thing, and wanting that to be an action. When I'm in pain, I may be giving off various information about my pain, but that expression of my face is not usually karma. It's not like I'm thinking, I'm going to make this face, And if I talk and you hear, sometimes you may hear some pain in my voice or some pleasure in my voice, but that isn't the same as saying, I'm going to now speak in such a way as to convey pleasure. That would be the karma, which would be preceded by the thought. Karma is a volitional, intentional thing, not accompanying information, which is not information about action.

[29:10]

So now maybe I could go on a little bit and talk about these disciplines. But before I talk about discipline, I want to talk about discipline in general. And that is... I told you the story, you know, a number of times about when I was a young kid and I thought... I saw, you know, I studied and I saw how easy it was to be bad and how much fun it is actually. But I also saw the trajectory of it. I had a few wooden ducks, wooden geese that I hung out with. You know what I mean? You familiar with that term? Well, you know, in one of the columns you say that the boat of compassion is not rowed over pure waters. In precipitous straits, to send out a wooden goose or a wooden duck is useless. But anyway, I had some wooden ducks. In other words, I had some friends who I watched them go down the precipitous strays.

[30:17]

I saw what happened to them. The older boys, I saw what happened to the older boys. For a while, it's lots of fun, but then I watched, and I saw that after a while, it wasn't cute. And after a while, the girls didn't think it was really sexy to go to jail. The first time was sexy. Second time was kind of like, well, let's get on with this. That was supposed to be kind of like a message about something else, not sort of like a thing you do over and over. Do you know what I mean? So the boys who had the guts to go to jail are supposed to be able to do other things that are more interesting. But to go to jail over and over is not the point. So I saw that the boys who went to jail over and over, I saw where they went. They basically went to jail over and over, and that was the end of that. It was a rut. It was a downer. But easy, easy. The way of going good I saw, at 12, I saw that the way of going good was the way, was the cool way. And so I tried to go that way.

[31:19]

However, I needed discipline. And without discipline, it's pretty hard to do it, given all that's happening, you know. in this world of karma, everything is changing and all these delusions arising and impulses to fix things and actions and results and blah, blah, blah. So discipline is what helps you stay with something. Then in relating to Roberta's question, once you have a discipline then the discipline not only serves to structure your mind but even more than It serves as a form for you to give yourself to completely or not completely. So first of all, the discipline creates a support in your own mind to guide you through the precipitous straits. Second of all, it provides a form for you to give yourself to completely.

[32:23]

And of course, this form is taken on in an extremely turbulent field of selfishness. We take on a discipline in the middle of this chaotic and turbulent life of being a selfish being and all the mess that's created by our selfishness still somehow we have the good fortune to be even considered and be offered a form of discipline. If we then say that's a good idea and actually commit ourselves to that discipline we have structured the field of chaos not chaos, the field of turbulence is not chaos, it's actually lawful according to the field of selfishness, the painful field of selfishness has now been structured by this positive intention, if it is a positive discipline. But the important thing is, and this is partly related to Rob's question last night, how do you go from taking care of the realm of karma and taking care of disciplines, how do you go to the realm beyond karma?

[33:25]

How do you get, in other words, how do you get free of the discipline? And you get free of the discipline by doing the discipline so fully that your self drops off. Because you cannot do a discipline a hundred percent if you're still holding on a little bit to the little me who's doing the discipline. When you first start doing the discipline it's when the person commits himself or herself to the discipline that has a positive structuring quality on your mind. but there's still somebody doing it, you're still in the realm of karma, the world's still turbulent and a mess but at least you got some help there. You're still holding out though, I'm still doing the discipline. As you gradually through the discipline realize that the holdout is also painful and you see that the discipline helps you see how your selfishness is causing problems and you also see how your withholding of energy your resistance to the discipline, in other words, either doing it too much or too little, you know, liking it too much, having too much fun, or not, you know.

[34:30]

Anyway, you're in misery in relationship to that discipline. You gradually realize that if you would give yourself entirely to the discipline, boom! that maybe would make everything go really well and turns out it does and what happens in the process is not only is that wonderful to give yourself entirely to a discipline but the self drops off, the self-attachment drops off, the self has been tossed into the discipline completely. So when you wholeheartedly enter into a relationship and with not holding anything back the cause of suffering drops off, the condition for suffering drops off. So like in a marriage The marriage in the first place is a discipline. You make a commitment. That's what a marriage is, basically. You say, I vow to, you know, hang in there with you. But you still sort of say, well, you know, if things go this way, I will. But if they go that way, I won't. Or blah, blah, blah. You still have some reservations, some conditions. There's still a self there who's making deals with the basic commitment. But when you completely give yourself to the discipline of the marriage,

[35:37]

the self drops off and then that's called marital bliss, that's called nirvana. And the same with these other disciplines which we'll get into. So, total devotion to the discipline is nirvana, is really pleasant. But before you get to total devotion, which means self drops off, and entering nirvana. Before you get there, still the discipline is helping you because it shows you, it helps you see your resistance. Having a schedule and committing yourself to it, then it surfaces your resistance. If you don't have any commitments, you don't notice that you're resisting everything. I'm not going, but so what? Or I am going, but so what? Or I'm early, but so what? Or I'm late, but so what? It doesn't make any difference because you make no commitment. When you make commitment, then your resistance shows up. Your resistance is your self clinging. Or you, you know, I'm the best follower of the schedule.

[36:42]

Or I'm, you know, I don't care about the schedule, blah, blah, blah, after you committed to do it. Then your self starts to get highlighted, clarified, the pains of it. And then finally, you jump in there. But before that, it's still helpful. It helps you study yourself and your self-cleaning. And you finally see, I'm going to give myself entirely to this form. And then you do. And so in the words of the clear-eyed dance critic Arlene Koch, you become impeccable. And the impeccable spontaneously leaps into the ineffable. And another thing I read is a bassist said, it's discipline, [...] and then you throw it away. So, as I was saying to someone this morning, what was it?

[37:46]

If I go and play the piano, since I'm undisciplined in the piano, you'll see, oh, he's undisciplined. So what? Not very interesting. Just some guy messing around on the piano. If I would discipline myself for some time, you could see, oh, obviously he's been disciplining himself in the piano, he can play a little bit. But you could still feel I would be stiff, you know, because I'm learning the discipline, or I have learned the discipline, but I'm just the discipline. But still, it's a wholesome thing, and it provides a wholesome structure in my mind, playing the piano. But at a certain point, people get so good at this discipline that the discipline drops away. And then this thing happens, which people come from all over the world to listen to, is when these people who have disciplined themselves, the discipline drops away. And it's nirvana. In that realm, at that time, there's no self there anymore.

[38:48]

And this music is everybody's music. It's the music not of that person anymore. It's not even music anymore. Nobody even knows what it is. But they have a feeling that it was great. They don't know why. Like I listen to Yo-Yo Ma. You know, I've heard some... I love the cello anyway, and I've heard some kids play the cello that just... So moving, you know, so beautiful, like ten-year-old kids sometimes can play it and just be so disciplined and so lovely, you know. Also, sometimes little kids are starting to play the cello. They're not very good. That's also cute to see them even try at the very beginning, but they can get quite good, and it's so lovely to see it happen. When Yo-Yo Ma played, I couldn't tell what was going on. I could not tell if it was good or bad. It was like, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't tell he was skillful. I had no, it's like, it had nothing to do with that. But I've heard lesser people, you go, oh God, are they skillful, they're amazing, you know, just amazing how skillful they are. But when he plays, it's like, it's got nothing to do with that.

[39:51]

I mean, I had no way to tell it was beautiful, skillful, anything. It was another world. Just another world, that's all. Just another world. I don't even know what to say about it, because it's another world. But it wasn't what I thought of as music. And he was playing, like, ordinary things, like Bach and Beethoven and stuff like that, you know. Which, lesser musicians, I'd go, oh, it's so beautiful. Because they didn't push it beyond beauty, even. And yet, I somehow felt like I was in... I didn't regret going. So, you watch this thing, you know, somebody, no discipline, fine, some discipline, fine, and then going beyond it. But you go beyond it by going to the end of it. And going to the end of it means you have to drop off yourself. You cannot be there anymore doing the music. You cannot be there anymore doing the moral discipline. If you're there, you're still holding back a little bit and you're still

[40:53]

in good shape, you're following the discipline, that's good, that's wholesome, but it hasn't yet served its real function which is to set you free. Pratimoksha means conducive to turning around, conducive to liberation from the ordinary world of karma. Okay, so there are three kinds of discipline as presented Discipline of those forms which are conducive to liberation, discipline in concentration and pure discipline. Shall I write it in Sanskrit? Yes. So discipline is samvara. Samvara. And there's three kinds. Pratimoksha. jnana and anasrava.

[42:05]

Remember anasrava, remember sasrava, remember asrava, asrava, remember asrava, floods? Anasrava means not any floods, not any outflows, in other words pure. These are three types of Discipline. This type, the first type, is a type of where you take on these actual monastic or, you know, vows. Or, anyway, some vows. And there's eight types. The second one is where you discipline yourself in concentration practices. And the third one is where you discipline yourself, you're under a discipline of purity. or the discipline of not having outflows. And there's two types. And so this is the stream enterers up to the arhats, practicing the Anasrava Sambhara.

[43:13]

This is for those who have practiced these other two kinds of discipline to the end and have gone beyond them. So the first three types are still under discipline. I mean, I'm still training, but all four types are doing a discipline which has no outflows. I can go into detail on that later, but anyway. Was there a noise there? Okay. The last part? Well, just that the four stages of sanctity, you know, the stream-enterer, the once-returner, the never-returner, the arhat, those are the people who are practicing this pure discipline. And the first three types are still training. The arhat's not training anymore. However, the arhat's still under a discipline, but the discipline that they're under is a discipline of purity. It's that their life is disciplined by, and they discipline themselves by the path which doesn't have outflows.

[44:18]

They're not training anymore. They've graduated the course, but they still practice that discipline. Yeah, they're free of the discipline and that's their discipline. Just like Yo-Yo Ma is free of the discipline and he gets there and he just demonstrates his freedom of the discipline. And these spiritual beings, they actually do the discipline as a way to show people, like Buddha. Like I said before, Buddha was out in the forest and the man says, Now, the man didn't say, the Buddha sort of guessed. He said, now you may think, you see me out here meditating in the forest, still doing the discipline of meditation in the forest, you may think, well, actually, is Gautama really free of greed, hate and delusion if he keeps doing the discipline? He says, well, I am free of the discipline. I don't need the discipline anymore, the Buddha said. However, I continue to do it because I like it. He is the discipline. Huh? He is the discipline. He is the discipline. And I like it because I'm it. And also, I do it to encourage future generations. And that's the way great musicians and artists and et cetera, they continue the work after it liberates them because they enjoy it and also because it provides a model for other people to take on discipline.

[45:30]

That's the arhat. The other people still have a little bit more training to do, but their training doesn't have outflows, but their training is they have to remove certain kinds of things which were accumulated under the auspices of outflows. So there's still training. But their training is this outflow, I mean, it's a discipline which doesn't have outflows anymore. They're free of this self-other thing. They got to a point where they completely gave themselves to their practice. To the practice. It seems that if you're trying to do good... I understand, I'm repeating it for the tape. It seems that if you're trying to do good, there's a danger that you'll suppress and deny what isn't good, you push what isn't good, impulses out of your consciousness. That's why I recommend that the way, once you receive precepts, that the way to practice them is by being upright, because being upright lets all the material surface, lets the unwholesome things surface to consciousness and the wholesome things surface to consciousness.

[46:35]

But your vow is not that you're supposed to block the awareness of unwholesome things, it's your vow, it's your intention that you made at one time. And once you said at one time, I vow to embrace and sustain all good, and you said that, and you said that wholeheartedly and with joy, that installs that thing in your mind. Then when unwholesome things arise later, they arise in the context of the karmic effect of saying that. Okay, now Rebecca is saying, well isn't there some danger then that if you have made that vow and if you continue to think that way that you'll start to like push, in some sense deny or push away the awareness of unwholesome thoughts that do arise in your mind, right? Is there some danger of that? There's also some danger that you'll think that you push away wholesome thoughts in your mind, because although you say you want to practice good, actually when you see the consequences of what it takes to practice good, you push those away too.

[47:40]

There's always a danger of suppressing good and bad impulses. That's why if you're upright, you put your energy that way, then that tends to let these things come up into awareness. And uprightness is also not only the way you relate to the delusions that arise, upright is also the way you relate to the precepts themselves. You don't lean into it, like I was saying to Charlie yesterday, the advantage of the upright posture or the upright attitude to these precepts is that it has the strengths of both the conservative understanding of morality and the liberal understanding of morality. It takes the positive sides from both of those and drops the negative sides of both of those. So if you're upright in relationship to some discipline you take on, some ethical discipline like not killing or something, to be upright with that, you take on the integrity and conviction of the conservative understanding of that.

[48:44]

In other words, you really sit there with the feeling of I accept the, what do you call it, the literal, conventional understanding of not killing is not killing. And there's a conviction in that and an integrity in that and a strength in that. But it isn't that the uprightness is that integrity and strength, it's that the uprightness just allows that integrity and that conviction to be there. because there is something good about it. However, being upright means that you just see the good of doing good and that's it. You don't then sort of say, oh, what do you call it? You don't have to get self-righteous about it or dogmatic about it. You don't have to be dogmatic because in your uprightness you see the value of good. When you don't see the value of good, when you really don't see it very clearly, then you have to be dogmatic and self-righteous about it to convince yourself that it really is. But when you see it, that's enough. Like, I was saying to someone something about that you don't have to be sure that the precepts are right.

[49:54]

She said, well, don't you have to be that way about killing? And I said, well, aren't you convinced you have to be sure that not killing is bad? Can't you just think that it's not bad? Isn't that sufficient for you'd like to not do it? Or do you have to say it definitely is true that it's not bad? I would say you have to say that and be dogmatic about it when you don't really trust it. Do you see that point? It's rather subtle. So, to sort of like get heavy about it and say it really is true, why get heavy about it? Because you don't really believe it. If you're upright, in that uprightness you see it's true for you in that state and you feel the strength of it and the goodness of it. But you don't have to get self-righteous and dogmatic. is that being upright also embraces a liberal attitude. Namely, that what these are about are about being kind.

[50:54]

And these are to nurture our wholesome qualities. That's what these precepts are about. That's what they're really about. You can see that too. But you don't have to get into like thinking that's all relative. That's not being upright. that would lean away from the fact that these things actually have some integrity and you can have some conviction about this. You have conviction about the goodness of these precepts and the benefit of them without getting... and that's not a relative thing. So you avoid the relativity of the liberal approach but take with it the kindness and high priority placed on being kind and high priority placed on avoiding being cruel. But again, you don't have to be self-righteous about avoiding being cruel either. You just see that you want to do that. So that's the way that we respond to being good. Have the conviction of the goodness of good, but also the awareness that being good really is about being helpful to people.

[52:02]

It's about promoting and protecting life. That's what it's really about. So doing something for someone that doesn't promote that is a misunderstanding of what good is. That's a liberal understanding. But you don't have to get weakened by that sense of being kind to people in moral disciplines. And then, you don't have to be weakened by that in other words, your conviction doesn't have to be weakened into relativism. And in that space, negative impulses can arise and disappear as usual, but they don't have much effect. And since they don't have much effect, all the more you don't have to suppress them. But there is always a danger and the danger is that you won't be upright, that you'll lean. You'll lean away from negative things because you want to practice good rather than just there's a negative thing, I'm upright, it just falls off. Or you'll lean towards good things because you don't really trust them. Do you see that? Good things are good things.

[53:05]

Negative things are negative things. I've made a vow to do good things. Here's a good thing. That's my deal. Here's a bad thing. That's not my deal. That's it. Not, get me out of here! And then I become a slave of the negative. Or, get me over there to the good. Get me over there to the good is self-righteousness, over-identification. I'm, you know, get myself over there with the good. That's self-righteousness. It's identification of self with the right. That's why it's called the right. It's identification with the right. And the liberal in some ways is identification with not identifying with the right. Not clinging to what is obviously good when it's not anymore. See? Is that clear? When you give yourself completely to a form, you naturally are upright, you naturally are selfless, and that's the way to practice any ethical practice.

[54:10]

And I would say that doesn't apply, however, to unethical things. If you give yourself completely to an unethical thing, you won't be able to do it anymore, because all unethical things, all cruel things, have to have a self there. You will not do cruel things if you give yourself entirely to the cruel thing, if you ever would do that. If there were some person who was, I don't know what, a real criminal, and they met a really wonderful teacher of whatever tradition, that teacher might take them and push them to the limits of their cruelty, of their criminality, and say, no, no, more, [...] more. See, I'm still here doing the bad thing, right? push the person to do it completely and when they do it completely they would stop and hopefully put them in an environment maybe where no one would get hurt so that the Buddha would not tell the person well kill more people but might say try to kill more people or try more wholeheartedly to kill that person at the same time protecting the person but get the person to really work hard to kill the person you see

[55:28]

And when they completely gave them whole being to it, the self would be totally engaged and the source of evil action would drop away. There was a story about this actually. It's called the story of a gulimala. He was pretty energetic and he was a high, you know, he was like top-of-the-line murderer. Agulimala, you know what a mala is? He had a mala of agulis. Agulis are fingers. Every time he killed somebody, he put a finger on his mala. He wore all these fingers around him. He had about a thousand fingers. Anyway, finally, he was like public enemy number one in India, right? So finally the authorities were closing in on him and he was going to be a goner. So his mother went to the Buddha and said, please save my son.

[56:30]

So the Buddha went over to Gulimala. Of course, Gulimala seeing the Buddha thought, one more murder victim, yum yum yum, and started to go after the Buddha. So the Buddha started walking away. So Gulimala started, he increased the velocity of his approach so the Buddha kept walking but he didn't get closer to the Buddha so he ran faster he didn't get closer to the Buddha and he ran faster and he ran to the limits of his ability to run and to try to kill the Buddha and couldn't catch because making no ground catching the Buddha he's getting close you know trying to kill the Buddha like brought him to the limit of his attempt to kill and finally he says how come I'm not catching you? I'm running so hard, I'm running so fast and you're running so slow but I'm not catching, how come I'm not catching?" Guru says, "'Cause I'm not moving." And Guruji Mahala dropped off and became a monk. And there's different versions of what happened after that, but I'll tell you about later.

[57:39]

But anyway, the point is that the Buddha, in order to save Agulimala, brought his, you know, all that avijñapti that was guiding him towards murder to its limit, and then Agulimala could be saved, and no one got hurt. And actually, in that situation, because he went into the, I'll tell you a little bit about it, because he went into the priesthood, Because he became a monk, the authorities didn't kill him. They had him under Buddha's supervision. And so he became a monk, a good monk. He did get retribution, though, for his murders. I'll tell you. But because he was practicing, when the retribution came, he took it and experienced the intense a pain of the retribution, and we still continue to practice. So, that's that.

[58:44]

Anything else? We're getting close to time to stop. Yes? Just one comment about transcendence of form. When you were talking about music, I was thinking that although transcendence of form does happen in classical music and other forms of music, it's in some ways good at playing their instruments and understanding the form of the music. And then when they play, they play outside the form. They go beyond the form. So you don't hear the form in the music anymore. You're not hearing them play the form. But other people can be playing with them and playing the form of the music, and it fits completely. It just isn't apparent within what they're doing. but in the middle of doing whatever they're doing, they can and will return to playing the form and leave playing the form. It's kind of easier to perceive in that context.

[59:46]

Hearing that, I have the same reaction I have when I hear certain koans. Goosebumps and tears. Goosebumps and tears. When you hear about emptiness, you're supposed to get goosebumps and tears. It's a good sign. When you're upright, you can feel goosebumps and tears. Anyway, I think that's really beautiful, and a friend of mine says he thinks that Beethoven would be playing jazz now if he was alive. That probably would be his medium. Because in a way, that's what he was doing, right? Beethoven was like flying off, totally out there, and yet he'd come right back. into the form, and people who could play the form with him, but he was like doing something, like totally out there. And so, now he would really be out there. Maybe he's, actually, maybe he is one of these people.

[60:49]

I don't know, several people had their hands raised, I didn't get it, who it was. Oh, Robbie. I think that they experience liberation from that form, but if they don't apply it to their other conduct, then in those other realms it doesn't work. So liberation is conditional. Well, the thing about it is that the fundamental liberating thing is about just your daily karma. So if you pick a special section of your karma, and work on that, and you don't work on the other part, I think that that's not taking on the liberating discipline. You can't just do it in part of your karmic range.

[61:51]

So a person who accepts the Buddhist disciplines would apply that then to the way they play music, and the way they paint, and the way they write, and the way they cook. But if a person only takes it on in the realm of cooking, they're only disciplining themselves in the realm of cooking, or painting, or marriage, that won't liberate you completely. That'll only do it in that area. So there are different kinds of liberation. The liberation of Buddhism is a liberation which deals with your entire range, all your karma. And so, if you gave yourself entirely to your music. If you really could do that, then you would give yourself entirely to other realms, too, and you would drop off there. And I think some musicians, you can think of some, it seems like they do it in other realms of their life, too. They seem to be very kind, you know, like I heard about Franz Liszt, you know, I don't know, it's a tricky example, but he gave

[63:04]

He gave master's courses for musicians and never charged. He did a lot of kindness. He championed lots of other musicians and made a lot of other musicians' work known. Sometimes the art spreads beyond the limits. They apply that same selflessness or total dedication to some kind of discipline to other places. So some artists would take it on totally their whole life and their art would be just one realm. A Buddhist practitioner takes it on in all realms, including the art, whatever art they do. If they don't do any art, then they don't. If they do, the same rule would apply. But it's in general, it's all karma. Then you'd be all liberated, and that would be a different level of liberation. So the forms, you know, the precepts that we take and other forms we take, If you think about doing them in a wholesome way, that's good.

[64:09]

If you say you'll do them, that creates additional support. If you physically, you know, do prostrations and sew raksus and things like that, that provides more support. Sewing the raksu is a physical action to accompany the taking of the refuge. Those two together create an envelope or a support for your practice. And again, the finale is that the full realization of the merit of these disciplines comes in the understanding that the merit is not entirely in your execution of the form, but your energy you put into it is met is responded to by the meaning of the whole discipline, namely enlightenment or liberation.

[65:14]

So you put your energy into some form of practice and the full merit of that comes when you're responded to and when you appreciate that response, when you see how your dedication to the form is met by the entire cosmos. And your complete dedication means you throw your individual existence into the form, and the cosmos comes to meet your selflessness. So, there's one thing I've been wanting to talk about for several, quite a few classes, but I feel uncomfortable talking about it, but I'm going to talk about it now, finally, here it comes. And it has to do with something which I don't want to be a technique, I'd rather have you think of it as a ceremony, you know, or just a form. And it's the ceremony of what we call Hara. And that has to do with being aware of the part of your body below your navel, but not way below, just about two or three inches, two or three inches below your navel, be aware of that area down there.

[66:27]

And sometimes it helps, like with me, it helps me to lower my obi a little bit. And then I push against the obi and I feel a little bit more aware down there. And also putting my hands against it during meditation helps too. But just generally to bring my awareness into this part of my body is one of the most helpful ceremonies that I do to inhabit my body. to take up, you know, to be present. It's a ceremony or it's a ritual, in a sense, that helps me be present. And this part of my body, you know, I don't have so much trouble, you know, like feeling my feet on the ground, I shouldn't say trouble, but I can do that pretty well, and also working on my posture to be upright, those two, but I have to make a special effort then to sort of like, in a sense, a little bit like, almost like push myself down into that area.

[67:33]

and the combination of feeling my feet on the ground and also feeling my body like stand up on those feet or sit up on that cushion, that effort of uprightness and then also coming then down into that part of my body, sort of like fills the body, and it brings me sort of like out to the fullness of my physical presence, and that effort then, again, There's a form of wholesomeness where when you bring yourself right to that fullness, not pushing too much, not pushing too little, but finding like what is the true fullness of that part of your body, the full little pot down there, what is that? That you meet it just right but not going too far, too little, not shrinking back from that place and not going over it, you're met. And then a bigger energy than your own personal energy starts functioning through that awareness.

[68:37]

It's very useful. And part of the reason why I hate to sort of feel uncomfortable bringing up this because it's kind of like, you know, it's one of those Zen things, right? Hara. But it really is useful if you don't overdo it. If you don't overdo it. Huh? It's a yogic practice. It's a yogic practice. I was wondering, I get to the end of the yogic practice, so when the Chinese, it's not so much Chinese. I think it is, I think it's really Chinese. The Indians also do it, but the Chinese are really big on it. Yeah, yeah. It's the cinnabar field in Taoism. So I think that of course the Indians are into it too, but I haven't heard them talk about it as much as the Chinese, but I think they are. And that's maybe one of the influences of Daoism on Buddhism, as it comes through in Zen. Hara.

[69:41]

Hara means, is it... Tanden. Is it Tanden? Yeah, Tanden. Tanden in Japanese and Tantien in Chinese, cinnabar field. And Hara is short for it. I think Hara is... Isn't this Hara? Isn't this Hara? No. What's Hara? Do you know the character for Hara? You can be American and still write. It's heading in the right direction. You see, it does have a right field in there. Because Hara's were... Hara and rice field. So, get your thinking down in that rice field.

[70:44]

It would be quite helpful. Try to bring your presence down as part of your body too, besides the rest of it, but bring it right down there. I think you'll be rewarded for such a kind of effort. Okay? Is everything clear now about the laws of karma and discipline and all that? No. Different hara. There are several haras. This is just one of them. Yeah.

[71:28]

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