This course, the title of this course is Buddha's Self-Fulfillment Samadhi. Another way to say that is Buddha's Meditation on Self-Fulfillment. Another way to say it is Meditation on Self-Fulfillment, which is the meditation of Buddhas. And last week I wrote the characters for self-fulfillment on this board. And so literally the characters for self-fulfillment are self, receive, and employ, or self-receive and use. So it could also be called self-enjoyment.

[01:05]

Self-enjoyment is receiving and using the self. That's how the self is fulfilled. Self-enjoyment is a fulfilling function related to a self. And then there's practice of being aware of this or meditating on this or being absorbed in this process of self-fulfillment or self-enjoyment. And this absorption in this process is proposed as the path of enlightenment. Last week I offered a definition of enlightenment as the silent bond among all beings, the state of being silently bonded with all beings, or the state of all beings

[02:31]

being silently bonded to each other. And I don't remember what else I said, but I'll say tonight that this bond, this enlightenment, say it gives off light. it is enlightening. Another way to say it is that this enlightenment is the means of all beings receiving light and giving light, giving off light. the way we're bonded to each other is the way and means of our receiving light and it's the way or means of us giving or giving off light.

[04:03]

This and to the extent that the light that we give off, then our light is enlightenment too. All beings are engaged in this activity, in this enlightening activity, which is both being and enlightening. All beings are engaged in this. All beings are engaged in Buddha activity. So through this silent bond all beings give off light and through this silent bond all beings receive light.

[05:11]

So there is a practice of meditating on the teaching, the Dharma, that all beings are receiving light and giving off light through their relationship with all other beings. It is our nature that we are born of this bond with each other and so it is our nature to be light. Another way to say this is all beings which are embraced by this teacher, which are embraced by enlightenment, together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the inconceivable profound Dharma. All beings bring forth light, bring forth the teaching, bring forth enlightenment for the sake of all beings.

[06:28]

Each of you bring forth this light for the sake of all other beings. So for example, grass brings forth the light for the sake of all beings. And all beings in accord extend the light for the sake of grass. You can also say grass brings forth this teaching. for all beings and all beings in accord extend this teaching for the sake of grass. So all beings again includes all living beings like us, all enlightened beings, those who have realized this life fully, and all non-living beings who are also in a bond with us, and we're also in a bond with them.

[07:36]

And so we have a radiant relationship with grass, which is sometimes not that difficult to tell, especially now, this time of year in California. When you look at the grass, sometimes you can that you're in this bond with the grass and that it's an enlightening bond and that you're giving off light to the grass and the grass is giving light to you. Through grass you see light or you understand light. Also because you understand light you give light to the grass. Does that make sense? you were saying the light wasn't the same as that light, but now you're just using the word light. When you talk about the grass, you said light.

[08:38]

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like I switched to the other kind of light, but I didn't. I don't mean to. I mean, that also applies to the other kind of light, though, too, that it's through the electromagnetic radiation through touching the grass and coming from the grass to our eyes that we see through the grass. But there's another kind of light which is more difficult to see, for example, in the middle of the night when you look at the grass. At that time you might not be able to see the light of the grass because of electromagnetic radiation. What is it? is it reduced in the night? Is there less electromagnetic radiation of that type bouncing off the grass? Is that what's happening? In the visible spectrum. You smell the grass at night.

[09:43]

And when you smell the grass, then in that case you can realize how the grass is enlightening you. in this other way. And then also I just mentioned earlier, in meditation we say, right in the light there is darkness and right in the darkness there is light. Last week someone said they seem to kind of get what I'm talking about and then it slips away. So this is about to happen again probably now. But I tell you that the use of light and dark here can also be reversed. Right in dark there's light and right in light there's darkness.

[10:44]

actually in the way it's being used in the text I'm referring to, light means what you can see with your discriminating consciousness. Or light is your discriminating consciousness. But right in the light of your discriminating consciousness there's darkness. And what's the darkness? The darkness is the light of the way your discriminating consciousness is in on with all other discriminating consciousnesses which you can't see the same way that you normally see things. You can't see the light, the spiritual light, with your discriminating consciousness. Why is it called light? In that case, maybe because that consciousness is light.

[11:52]

When you're aware, for example, when you see me, there is a knowing, there is a cognition, and that cognition is basically it's clear and it's illuminating. You know that I'm here through your interaction with me. That interaction with me is your knowing of me being here with you. And there's illumination in that awareness of my presence. And so it's clear light. Your cognition of me is clear light. So I don't know if you're ready to move on to the next point about the other kind of light. Did you get that kind of light? So ordinary consciousness, ordinary consciousness is clear light by definition.

[12:55]

Knowing is light. However, that is not the same light as the light of how all beings contribute to the arising of that cognition, and how that cognition contributes to the arising of all other cognitions and all other living and non-living things. Another light, and that light could be called darkness. So right in your ordinary discriminating consciousness, which is discriminating between different colors and pain and pleasure and good and evil. In that discriminating consciousness there's darkness. There's something you can't see with that discriminating consciousness. But what you can see with non-discriminating consciousness and non-discriminating consciousness

[13:58]

where you study your discriminations to the point where you're no longer grasping them. So you could say that, yeah, so... And you could do it the other way of calling ordinary consciousness dark and call non-discriminating consciousness light. Either way. He goes either way. But there's also an expression, the spiritual shines clearly in the light. The spiritual source, which is dark. No discriminating consciousness does not reach non-discriminating consciousness. Does that make sense? discriminating consciousness doesn't reach the source.

[15:03]

No conscious, no discriminating consciousness reaches the source. However, the spiritual source, which is dark, shines in the light. The dark shines in the light of ordinary discriminating consciousness. Ordinary discriminating consciousness is light, but it's a psychological or a cognitive light the spiritual light is inconceivable. And we have to give up discrimination in order to fully let it in and fully realize it. So we say this spiritual light, which is dark ordinarily, shines in the consciousness. And then the other statement is the branching streams flow in the darkness, the branching streams of light.

[16:09]

In other words, each of our ordinary discriminating consciousnesses which we're using right now in this conversation, all these discriminating consciousnesses are like branching streams, like branching logical circuits. Discriminating consciousness are like branching streams. They're light. And these branching streams of cognition are flowing in the darkness into relationship. And the darkness, this dark interrelationship, which is dark in the sense that it's inconceivable, ungraspable, unreachable by any cognition, that's the spiritual source. And we're flowing in this spiritual source all the time. And this spiritual source is the light of Buddha's wisdom. It's Buddha's wisdom.

[17:13]

And it gives off a great light which doesn't change when you turn the light off. It doesn't get darker, it doesn't get weaker when you turn the lights off. It gets stronger when the lights go back on. But our visual consciousness is affected by electromagnetic radiation. It gets turned on and off by electromagnetic radiation in our bodies. And it's light too, it's radiant too, but it's a cognitive, psychological light. And what are the branching streams in this darkness? The branching streams are our discriminating consciousness. So in this darkness, we move in this ocean of inconceivable dharma, which is actually light, spiritual light. And this darkness is what enlightens us, which can enlighten us as to our relationships.

[18:18]

Beyond our discriminations about our... We have ideas of our relationships, right? Like we're, basically we're all friends here, and there may be somebody outside this room who's not our friend, or maybe not. But anyway, if you think everybody's your friend... So does that clear that up at all, Stephen? Sort of. I'm not so sure, I mean, it actually makes more sense to me to call this inconceivable a darkness than to call it light. Well, it's spiritual light. Why use the word light? Because it enlightens. Because, again, remember the definition of enlightenment? Enlightenment is what enlightens. And enlighten, being enlightened, enlightened, enlightened means, yeah, enlightened means, no, no, enlightened is past participle of enlightened, right?

[19:25]

And enlightened means to be free of delusion. That's why we call it light. But from the point of view of ordinary discriminating consciousness, this thing which enlightens us, which sets ordinary discriminating consciousness free of delusion and misinformation, it's dark. But it enlightens us. And also this way of talking is it helps you, I think, not try to grasp and figure out with your discriminating consciousness what I'm talking about here. That's another advantage of darkness and light, this kind of language. John? You okay? Okay. Jennifer? I'm thinking about the sutra, Hands of the Perfection of Wisdom.

[20:31]

Yes. And I'm wondering, because that talks a lot about bringing light forward. Yes. So, thinking is the perfection of wisdom, the vehicle or the channel that we're able to connect between the darkness and the light. Yeah. The perfection of wisdom brings light. Or you could say it is light. It disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion. So wisdom, light, enlightenment, and this self-fulfillment are synonyms. darkness dispersing light. So we have cognitions which the nature of our cognitions is light. However, we do not understand this fully.

[21:35]

Our cognitions which are clear light are also, because of karmic developments, obscured. This wisdom this light, the spiritual light, illuminates our discrepancies, which cannot reach the source of the illumination, but the illumination can illuminate the cognitions and disperse the gloom and darkness of delusion and misinformation and obscuration Laurie? A couple questions about the characters. So is that top character the same character that's used for, like, you know, there's no self in Buddhism, but there is no self.

[22:38]

Is that the self that the characters use for self? And also, sort of related, is the two characters that receiving and employing put together Is that a normal idiom for fulfillment in other senses of the word fulfillment? You mean in colloquial speech? Not necessarily. I mean, even in the time of... I'm not sure of the, you know, what do you call it, the diction related to this, but I think that these two together, if a Chinese person saw it as enjoyment or fulfillment. And this character for self, I think this character is not the character that's used for no self. There's another character for self which means more like, which means more, has a somewhat more limited meaning, which

[23:39]

the one that they use quite frequently is a self, which means like an ego. This could be used for that, but it can be used either way. So one of the things I was going to mention tonight was that sometimes we say to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And then the character that's used there is this one together with another one. This is ji, and they put it together with another word, ko. So it's actually to study this together with another character, which just makes it, doesn't make it more like an ego. It just, Chinese is often, you know, disyllabic. So anyway, it's ji ko. It means self. Now, I forgot which ko is, but what I'm saying here is that it says that to study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[24:45]

And then it says to study the self is to forget the self. So on one side, you could say that to study the Buddha way is to study the independent the apparent independent self. To study the Buddha way is to study our delusions about self. And then it says to study the self means to forget the self. So on that side, looking at it from that side, you say, well, to study Buddha way is to study the self. the self that's not in a relationship with all beings. It's to study the obscured version of the self, the deluded version of the self. And to really study that thoroughly is to forget that. And then to forget that is to have the self things. In other words, to realize the self which is in a bond with all beings.

[25:47]

But another way to say this would be to study the Buddha way is to study the self which is in the bond with all beings. So one way is you study the self which is obscured, which is evil. The other way is you study the self which is in the silent bond with all beings. In other words, to study the self which is enlightenment. Study the self which is realized by all things. On one side you study the self which is not realized by all things. That one's easy to find, right? Study the self which doesn't realize and support all things. Have you seen that one? Study that one. When you study it thoroughly, you'll forget that one. Then you'll have a self that's realized by all things. In other words, you'll have a self which is born

[26:48]

to the support of and by supporting all things. So you can go to that self, you can go to enlightenment by studying the deluded version of the self thoroughly, forgetting it, and then realizing the way it really is. Or you can go study the self by studying the enlightened self, because this character could be the enlightened self too, or the self which is enlightenment, the self which is in this ...relationship, and just directly start studying the self which is realized by all things. Look for that one. So again, this dark and light, you can't, it's difficult, a lot of the time anyway. It's difficult to study the self which is realized by all things. It's hard to see that one. It's in the dark, right? But right in the self you already see, which is not supported by and supporting everything.

[27:51]

Right in that one, there's this other one, which is shining right there. But it's hard to see. It's in the dark. Light, in what's easy to see, is what's hard to see. Vice versa, you can start with what's easy to see and then study it until it gets dark. And then you realize... what's hard to see. Namely, it's hard to see what's easy to see forgotten. Do you see the two ways? And in some ways, the safest way is to study the self that you don't see in relationship to all beings, dash, to study the self which is to some extent independent of some... Yeah, it's easy to find a reed that's not Marilyn, right? It's easy to find a reed which is separate from John.

[28:51]

You probably can find that. Most of us can find that. You is probably as easy as us, or maybe even easier. I don't know if it's difficult to find this illusory self, is it? Huh? You've been taught very well, haven't you? Yeah, and also you have lots of equipment to imagine. You have an imagination. You can think of this, and you've been rewarded for that kind of imagination. So now it's easy to find what is not in this bond with all beings. Right? Okay, if you study that thoroughly, you will not be able to find that. You will actually, excuse me, not just not be able to find it, you will see that it cannot be found. you will forget it for a while. Forgetfulness, you will see everything realizes something, and it's the self. So then you realize that self, which is enlightenment.

[29:55]

Or you can do the other way and look at in what you can see. But you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to look for the light in the dark, or look for the dark in the light. I didn't tell you that part. So we say, right in the light there's darkness, but don't look for the darkness. Right in the light there's darkness? Right in the darkness there's light, but don't look for the light in the darkness. Right in the light there's darkness, but don't look for the light in the darkness. regarded as darkness. In other words, don't try to see what you can't see. So when you look at something and you can't see it, then look at the fact that you can't see it, but don't try to see it. And when you can see something, realize that what you can't see is right there, but don't try to see what you can't see.

[30:58]

Just look at what you can see. Yes. You said one of those characters was enjoy. I said that the combination of the last two characters can be translated or understood as enjoy. So it could be self-enjoyment or self-fulfillment samadhi. So the first character could even be being. I don't think so. I'm looking at the lineup between that and Sat Chit Ananda, you know, the being, consciousness and bliss, which seems, in some way, fix. Yeah, it's close. It's really close. But this character will not allow you to yet call this being. You can't do that. You said, when you said,

[31:59]

You can't look for the light in the darkness. I take it that you mean... You're not supposed to. Your discriminating mind can't address that. And if you look for it, that's the discriminating mind. That's one way to do it. If you try to look for the non-discriminating mind in the discriminating mind, use the discriminating mind to get the non-discriminating mind, that won't work. But also if you realize the non-discriminating mind, you shouldn't start looking for the discriminating mind. But if we let go of the discriminating mind, it will sort of come. If you let go of the non-discrimination. And one of the main ways to let go of the discriminating mind is to give every discrimination equal opportunity, equal respect, equal appreciation. So if you like that person, you give this person and that person your full attention, your full thorough awareness and presence.

[33:14]

That would be training which would come to fruit as nondiscrimination. So you discriminate but you're not caught by it. Not being caught by discrimination comes from thoroughly studying discrimination in a really thorough impartial study without denying that you have discriminations. As I mentioned a little bit last week, we use the Bodhisattva precepts for that purpose of studying, for example, good and evil as a very important discrimination because it requires attention to the discrimination to avoid one and do the other. And that attention will show you eventually that these things that can be discriminated are inseparable

[34:18]

substantial existence and neither can be grasped. That's another virtue of non-discrimination or another quality of non-discrimination is understanding that. Which again opens to the light of wisdom. It is wisdom. So the metaphor of the ocean and the road, like when you ask me that you are the ocean and you are the road, you don't believe in the road very much. Perhaps we could just, just for the sake of clarity, say it's the river and the road.

[35:26]

Okay? So she's referring to this beginning of Ben Oakry's novel where he says in something like, in the beginning it was like a river. But then the river was covered by a road and the road covered everything. Okay, so now she's comparing what I'm talking to now in terms of this river-road thing. Also, the other part is because the road was originally a river, the road was always hungry. So in this context, the river is, I wouldn't say that the river is necessarily the spiritual light in this thing, but that the river is, I wouldn't say that it's nondiscriminating wisdom.

[36:43]

I wouldn't say that it is. I would say that it's more immediate experience, which is non-conceptual, which is, I should say, not mediated by conception. But immediate experience doesn't make sense to us, doesn't have meaning for us. So then we cover immediate experience on it, and so we can grasp it, and so it makes sense. But because the realm in which things make sense, which we like, was originally a realm that didn't make sense, in the realm of sense, in the realm of meaning, in the realm of things making sense, that realm is hungry. for the richness and fluidity and immediacy of the river under the asphalt.

[37:54]

However, even in the river, there are still discriminations. So even in the river, we still have to study. However, it's difficult to study in the river because the meditation instructions don't make any sense. So the meditation instruction actually happened on asphalt in the classroom where things make sense. And by listening to the meditation instruction you can enter into the discriminations at the level of the road where you're hungry and you can also enter into meditation instruction into the river and continuing to meditate in the river Because the reason we leave the river in the first place is because we don't have enough meditation background to be able to stand immediate experience, which means experience that doesn't make sense.

[39:03]

If experience doesn't make sense because of our past conditioning and delusions, we get scared. But if you meditate properly and enter the realm where things don't make sense and not be afraid, and go back to road building, not out of fear, but in order to have a classroom where you can share teachings for how people can get over the discriminations at the level of conception, and also enter then even into the realm of direct perception, without being caught by discrimination there either. Because even in direct perception you can still have a sense of self and other. Even though you don't have a concept for it, or you're not mediating the process through the idea of being separate from other beings, you still, you can tell that you don't really understand that everybody's on your side and you're on everybody's side because you're scared

[40:16]

that things don't make sense. ...held and supported so fully that actually, you could say, so that actually things do not make any sense, dash, you can stand that they don't. Like that, didn't I say the poem last week? The Rumi poem, didn't I say it? Beyond the ideas of good and right doing and wrong doing, there's a field, didn't I say that last week? I'll say it this way. Beyond the field... No. Oh, beyond ideas of wrongdoing and wrongdoing in the field, I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, life is too full for ideas and language to have any meaning. Oh no, life is too full to talk about these things.

[41:25]

And even the phrase, each other, doesn't make any sense. But you can stand the fullness of life that doesn't make any sense if you lie down in that grass. There's the grass again. Maybe you can stand this fullness rather than the what do you call it, the impoverished version of our direct experience, which does make sense. Hmm? Well, I would say spiritual is like, spiritual is when you, yeah, I would say spiritual is the not being caught by discriminating consciousness. I would say that's a spiritual situation.

[42:29]

But you get to that spiritual situation by studying the psychology of your discriminations. So I think part of what psychotherapy is trying to do is help people study their discriminations so that they become in some sense more skillful and aware of their discriminations And psychotherapy could lead to people becoming so skillful and so well-understood that they actually can let go of discrimination and have an experience of freedom from discriminating consciousness itself. That is kind of a spiritual thing. Because any discriminations you make about that don't reach it. Any psychological rendition you have of it doesn't reach it. It's not really a psychological phenomena, but it illuminates psychological phenomena.

[43:34]

Psychological phenomena do not reach ordinary discriminating consciousness. But the spiritual can illuminate. Fortunately, that's the whole point of it, it illuminates psychological consciousness. It can. So we're living in a realm which at any time could illuminate us if we're ready. We're surrounded by this teaching which all beings are radiating to us and which we're radiating back to them. We're in that all the time but it doesn't necessarily illuminate our ordinary consciousness for the purpose of, like, getting in and out of rooms and being on time for class. We use our discriminating consciousness for that purpose. And as you know, some people have trouble getting to class on time, so they need psychotherapy.

[44:35]

And with sufficient psychotherapy, people can, like, get to class on time, get to psychotherapy on time, leave on time, you know, accept that the class, that the therapy's over, You know, pay the fees, park the car, pay the ticket, make the donation to the city of Berkeley. Thirty-six bucks. They can do that, you know, without totally freaking out and worrying about it for months. And, you know, etc. You know what the people do. They bomb city halls, you know, because of traffic tickets. They hate meter maids. This is like not working well with discriminations. It's good to work better and better with discriminations and finally to the point of like, I can't get a hold of them anymore.

[45:39]

Every time I reach for good, there's evil right next to it. It's just so insubstantial. I'm still doing good. Matter of fact, I do it better than before as a result of studying my discriminations about good and evil. But I'm doing it so well now I can't even grasp it anymore. And if you can't grasp good anymore, and if you can't, I should say, if you can't practice good anymore because you realize how insubstantial it is, you should get somebody to substantiate it so you can practice it again. Does that make sense? If it gets so insubstantial you can't practice good, you've gone too far into insubstantiality. The proper understanding of the insubstantiality of good makes it easier to practice good and more joyful to practice good and more of confidence. You don't even have to be attached to it anymore. You love it so much.

[46:42]

I mean, I'm totally committed to it, unwaveringly, so much so that I don't have to, like, hold on to it anymore. It's wonderful that way. Before that, it's at least a little bit burdensome. Okay, do good, do good, do good. No, do good. It's a little bit tiring. You'd like a vacation from this doing good business because you have to keep grasping it all the time. Thanks for grasping it. But if you study it more and more, you realize the spiritual situation which then makes it effortless to practice good or evil. Hmm? Because you realize, for example, that good can never be found without evil right nearby. If you have good and evils like It's not a very clear good. The sharper good is one that has evil right there.

[47:45]

Really sharp. Right there, that's it, right there. That's the good and the evil is right there. Highly defined, penetratingly clear good. And then slight differentiations of good. This is good, but this is less evil. Could you illustrate that? Excuse me. By the way, this is an example of seeing how the phenomena, the being, good is a being, how the phenomena of good is in intimacy with all beings. Good is bonded with all beings, including all evil. Evil is also in bond with all beings, including all goods. So evil has its good. And when you see that it makes it effortless to avoid the evil and do the good.

[48:50]

Just like, you know, when you actually taste certain things which you know very well and which you know very well are poisonous. When you actually understand that, it's no longer difficult to stop. But you have to study a long time to actually get the taste. It's the same with the taste of this teaching. When you actually taste it, it's effortless. Yes? Last week you asked us to look at whether we felt we were close to other people. Yes. And then to study yourself in that way. Yes. I think I did something like that. I said something like that. And could you apply any of the things that you were saying to that particular question?

[49:58]

Yeah. So, for example, what you just brought up there, are you close to evil? Is evil a close friend of yours? And is good a close friend of yours? Or is good a close friend and evil is not a close friend? Evil gets stronger the farther away it gets. Pardon? What did I say? Evil gets stronger the further away it gets. The power of demonic forces, the power of evil, increases with the square of the distance. Whereas with light, it increases with the inverse of the square of the distance. Isn't that right? Remember that?

[51:04]

It's like keep your enemies near. Keep your enemies near, right. And also, keep the light near too. When the light moves away from you, it gets weaker. when the evil moves away from you, it gets stronger. Have you noticed that? I don't know if the evil, if actually it's the square of the distance. This is for electromagnetic radiation of the visual range of light. It decreases in strength with the reciprocal, you know, Inversely gets weak. Each inverse with the square of the distance. And evil is not the inverse. It is the square of the distance. So when it's really... Evil is not powerful anymore. When it's like not far away at all.

[52:10]

Because even a little way away gets squared. Maybe even more than squared up close. Have you noticed that? That's what I'm proposing. When they're close, no problemo. When they're far, big problem. And it gets worse the farther away they get. And the good also doesn't get worse, it just gets weaker as it gets farther away. So like the mafia term, you know, The mob think, keep your family close, keep the light close, keep them close, and keep your enemy closer. But that's like an antidote to pushing your enemy outside. Keep your enemy closer than what you naturally would want to keep close. Yeah, like that. Does that make sense now? Yes, it seems, if you don't acknowledge your faults and all that, you push them away, and now they really have an effect on you, because you fall into them.

[53:13]

Is that okay, what he just did there? Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm trying to make sense of it, yes. Do you see what you do with your hands? I didn't mean to... I know you didn't mean to, but... Even closer. It's not, but it is close. If I push away from myself... Yes, that's right. You got it right. Just got to watch your hands. Those discriminations count too. All those physical discriminations like how close you can put your hands to Deirdre's face. Don't miss those. Which I think makes the point also that if I'm ignorant of the effects of my actions, that's pushing them far away from me and I fall into the faults of that ignorance.

[54:14]

That may not be true. We're all somewhat ignorant of the consequence of how we have realized enlightenment. That's kind of like a little bit severe, I think, what you just said. If you ignore the teaching that your actions have consequence, that's really going to be a big problem. But it's a long way of practice between accepting the teaching, the light, that all actions have consequence, and studying that until you reach nondiscriminating wisdom. And then when you reach nondiscriminating wisdom, you enter the realm where you will actually now be able to the consequences of your action. But you can be practicing very effectively prior to this one of the most advanced understandings, even more advanced than understanding nondiscriminating wisdom, even more advanced than that by a long shot is actually being able to understand the consequences.

[55:27]

That does come with after nondiscriminating wisdom is realized. But prior to that, in order to realize nondiscrimination, probably almost everybody has to accept the teaching that our actions have consequence. If you don't accept that teaching, you won't study your discriminations thoroughly enough. You won't be able to study your discriminations thoroughly enough to realize nondiscriminating wisdom. Once you have that, Then you're in the realm where you can actually start to see how you're working together with people and how what you do matures and how what they do matures. Then you can start to see how this stuff works. So you don't have to have that level of understanding at this point. You just need to be observing your intentions. You have to be observing your intentions. And notice how the intentions are, what makes the intentions to a great extent is discriminations.

[56:32]

Like, your intention is the way you see yourself in relationship to the world. Your intention is not your relationship to the world. It's based on your relationship to the world. but it's your cognitive version of your relationship. And in that version of relationship there's discrimination. It's like, these are my close friends, these are my far friends, these are my enemies. This kind of discrimination is a field of your karma. So studying your karma will lead you to study your discriminations, will lead you to become free of your discriminations and free of your karma. being free of both of those, you enter into Buddha's realm. And in there you get this unobstructed functioning of the samadhi. In other words, the enlightenment which you've been swimming in is now working, you know, is now you realize how it's enlightening you and how it's through you enlightening others.

[57:39]

You start to see up the Tathagata. in your life, as your life. And then you can also start to understand cause and effect, not just from hearing it and paying attention to it as best you can, but actually be able to see it. But that's a very high level of understanding. But great, wonderful things can happen prior to that kind of realization. Yes? Well, I think I saw an example of what you're talking about. I've been thinking about it. I wanted to share it in a kind of often different realm. On PBS, they showed Abdul met with Justice Duller. There was Nick Jagger when he was really young, in the 60s, singing Sympathy for the Deaf. He had a tattoo on his chest.

[58:42]

But the whole feeling of it was like a party, so positive, joyful, and wonderful. with him singing, I mean, just beautiful, you know, expression in singing Sympathy for the Devil. I just feel like it's exactly... Yeah. [...] And I also mentioned last week I was, I saw this, what is it, in the New York Review of Books, this review of a Moldavar, Pedro Moldavar's new movie, Volbaire. Again, it's another way to say it. He had, keep diverse beings close to him. He has a way of showing us how if you bring the strange and the foreign and the very different, if you bring it up close, how it's disarmed. In other words, life affirming is to bring the evil close.

[59:45]

Life affirming. Whatever you consider evil, and a lot of times what we consider evil is what's different. That's the foundation of the Ku Klux Klan, right? Different people are evil. So it's white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, right? Isn't that what the group is? No Catholics, right? No Mormons, probably. I don't know. No Jews. No Asians. Probably no Hispanics, no Africans. Nobody calling to educate. Yeah, whatever, you know. Different is something different, something different, object of hate. That's the foundation of the organization, I guess. Push it far away, and what do you get? Whereas, bring it close.

[60:51]

or see yourself as one with it. Yeah, that's good. But also bring it if you're really, if you're just whistling Dixie, as they say. Get close to see if it's really true that you affirm this form of life, this diverse form of life. Yes. Sometimes there are people who show Hitler in a, I don't know if you want to say exactly sympathetic light, but he's domestic. And is there any danger that you lose some of your feeling about what kind of thing he represented because you start thinking of him in a very human way? I think there's danger in our life I think that's part of our life, is that whatever we have can be taken away from us. So if we have some level of understanding of the teaching, like if we have some level of understanding of morality, what's not good, there's some danger that we'll lose track of that, that we'll get confused about that.

[62:06]

And if you start meditating, if you don't meditate on cause and effect, if you don't pay attention to what's good and evil, those discriminations, there's a danger that some terrible things will happen, of course. But even if you do and develop some loosening around your views, there's danger. That's why I said you can get to a place where you see the insubstantiality of evil and then you might think, well, you might think, well, whatever, it doesn't matter. and this possibility of opening. As a general principle in the Buddha Dharma, all ignorant people are objects of compassion. What about the ignorant people who are not just ignorant but who are super cruel and who have participated in extreme cruelty and harm? Those people are also objects of compassion.

[63:12]

So you might feel like, well, if I feel compassion towards somebody who's doing evil, I might not be able to oppose them. There is that danger. It might happen. It's possible. But it's also possible that by being compassionate to people, by deeply feeling compassion for people who are doing something you think is very violent, harmful, and so on, that you'll be much more able to oppose them. because you won't be afraid of them. If you're generous enough towards the evil person, you won't be afraid of them anymore. And so you won't be afraid of what will happen to you or to them if you get close to them and say, you know, I'd like you to please stop this. And to be able to say that is another act of compassion and generosity. But if you notice that somebody who you thought was doing evil, now you practice compassion towards them, and then you think, well, it's okay that they're doing evil.

[64:17]

That's something that got off track there. Because if you have compassion for them, you don't think that them doing evil or cruel things, you know that that would hurt them. I'm reminded of a letter that Gandhi wrote to Hitler. appealing to him in a very human way and asking him, essentially, some of the things that he was doing. And it had a tone of compassion and almost equality. Yeah. And if there were more extremely developed, gifted bodhisattvas in Germany, they might have been able to help him. It's possible. However, this practice is not being put out here as something that's going to stop and eliminate evil. That isn't the name of the game, to stop all evil.

[65:20]

It's to develop freedom from the realm of good and evil. So that with that freedom, you can enter the realm of good and evil and help beings who live there So avoiding evil of the samadhi is not to eliminate evil. It's to become free of the discrimination between good and evil, enter Buddha's realm, and then be completely unhindered to help those who are involved in evil, to have more helping them and have no sense of not loving them and being fearless about them and devoted to them. And even Buddha couldn't stop every evil person, I shouldn't say every evil person, but couldn't stop every person who was involved in violent intentions.

[66:25]

Even Buddha couldn't stop. I've said this many times. Buddha couldn't stop his own cousin who wanted to kill Buddha. He couldn't turn his own cousin around that one. He tried, but he... However, he did, on many occasions, he did snap people out of extreme violence. So he didn't have any problem helping those people, but the people were not yet ready for him to help. He couldn't help people who didn't want to be helped, who were in very bad shape, and he could help them. So he did stop super crazy people on a dime occasionally and stopped super violent people. He was able to do that because he had realized state beyond discriminating consciousness. He was in this samadhi. So when he sees somebody who's violent, he feels that that's his close friend.

[67:28]

But you can see somebody who's your close friend who's doing something really unhealthy and not be afraid of them or what's going to happen to you and be willing to do whatever is necessary for them and they're not yet ready to let me help them. They're not yet ready to see that I love them. And you can see that then. You can see it's not the time. They're not going to listen to me. But as soon as they are, I hope I'm there. And even if someone else hurt me, if I helped them, I would have no problem doing that if I would help them. Does that make some sense? Any other questions tonight? I know. She's asked several. Just to give some other people a chance. No? Yes? It was maybe my ignorance of a lot of people.

[68:31]

In fact, whenever I hear Ms. Pitwood being singled out, it always seems to me not right that it happened in a whole culture of being surrounded by people. One of my humanities teachers, John Berryman, brought up the Apollonian and the Dionysian perspective on Hitler. One is that he was a very important figure who was the center of this kind of stuff. The other is that it was a cultural event. And he was just, he was part of it. He had, what do you call it, this charisma of being like, what do you call it, a sorcerer or something. He was trained to be an orator of a kind of mesmerizing orator.

[69:34]

And the culture just used him to act out this very unconscious thing that was going on in Germany at that time because of all tremendous fear of the evil one. Like George Bush. Well, like, to put it on George Bush. I mean, think of the culture of this country. Yeah. Whereas actually there's all kinds of, like, there's mechanisms by which the votes were not counted. People learned how to, like, hide votes or turn people away from the polls. People knew how to do that. This was in the culture about how to get somebody elected by manipulating various things. These things are in the culture and therefore he winds up to be president because of these power politics and legal shenanigans and I don't know what else you want to say.

[70:35]

That's in the culture. So another part of this Long story, very short, since it's 915 is another implication of this, which I've said over and over, is that you are, I am responsible for this war in Iraq. I am responsible for it. And so are you. Everybody's responsible for it, each person in a different way. but we are responsible, and we're responsible in two ways. One is we have all contributed to it, but none of us have made it happen by ourself. We're responsible, we've contributed, but none of us made it together. And also we're responsible in the sense that we will continue, every moment we continue to respond to the war. This class is part of our response to the war.

[71:35]

Me talking about this and saying that I feel responsible in two ways is my response. And I will continue to respond no matter what I do, moment by moment, is my response to all of you, is my response to all the kindness you do, and is my response to all the cruelty in Iraq. And being aware of that is also being aware of the bond. We can't get out of this relationship with all beings, with terrorists, with Jews, with Christians, with Muslims, with Buddhists. We cannot get out of that bond, and that bond is enlightenment. To put it away from ourselves is to divorce ourselves from the enlightenment process. Does that make sense? This is a meditation instruction, okay? And I thank you for meditating on this.

[72:36]

Please continue through the week as best you can. And I welcome you to bring me practical problems of doing this meditation inside and outside of this meeting space. Okay? Thank you very much.

[72:59]

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