I talk about the precept, the three pure precepts, refraining from all evil, practicing all good, benefiting all beings, no, no, purifying your mind, that's the ancient, most ancient version of the three pure precepts. We spent a long, three classes I think on, or two classes on, refraining from evil. And, uh, So tonight I'd like to talk about practicing good. And just as with the precept of refraining from evil, start with the conventional approach to it. And by carrying the conventional approach all the way to the limits of the conventional approach, by being completely thorough in the conventional approach, the conventional approach finally transcends itself and goes beyond conventionality.

[01:24]

So the conventional approach is approaching doing good in the realm of, or from the point of view of, yourself doing good, other people doing good, and yourself and other are separate. You approach from the point of view of existence and non-existence, from the point of view of doing and not doing something. This is the conventional world and other worlds. You approach from the point of view of your conception of what's going on, your ideas of what are good and bad, your idea of doing good. This is, in other words, the conventional approach. But again, the principle here is that if you exhaustively and thoroughly practice good And as you become impeccable at practicing good, impeccability leaps into ineffability.

[02:40]

Impeccable means not slipping, not tripping up anymore. And by being precise and completely devoted to doing good as best you can, to the limit of what you can do as an individual person, you reach the practice of the precepts which are beyond what a human being can do or not do. You go into the precepts which cannot be said, which cannot be expressed, but are our true nature. Still, we can't just go right into the ineffable practice of the precepts. We have to start in the ordinary world and learn the ropes, so to speak, of practicing good in the most conventional way and also in all the ranges of conventionality and all the dimensions of conventionality.

[03:46]

When we thoroughly master that, we can go on to practice the final meaning of the precepts. So again, the basic principle as taught by the Buddha and Nagarjuna and the other ancestors is you can't practice the precepts of doing good in the ultimate level without first mastering the conventional level. You can't be taught the practice of the precepts in the ultimate or final level without first being firmly based in the conventional level. But you can't attain the ultimate liberation based on the conventional level.

[04:53]

So you must go on to the ultimate level of practice in order for the precepts to take you beyond all human agency. But if you jump right into the ultimate practice without being based on the conventional, you just would be crazy. You'd just be silly and dangerous. When you say conventional, are you good at that? Thinking of good and bad. Yeah, thinking of good and bad. But thinking of good and bad as though good and bad were, you know, what you think they are. Or that good and bad are independent and can be separated. Or, you know, self and other, as though you really were separate from others. This kind of thing. Or doing and not doing. This is the conventional world that we live in, the world of karma. You have to master the world of karma before you can do the practice beyond karma. Okay? Yes? The way you're describing it, it appears to me that I would have to become this kind of perfected human being in the conventional sense before I could realize the ultimate sense.

[06:08]

No. Which is sort of like... No. No. You have to perfect the practice of a human being before you can do the practice of a Buddha. But being a human being... you're still a human being. In other words, you're still a sinner. So when you say master the precepts in the conventional sense, what do you mean by master? Master means that you become totally proficient at them. And in particular, that you become totally proficient at breaking them all the time. But you say no problem, but actually most people are not proficient at breaking them all the time. Most people think they break them just once in a while, right? You have to become, you know, very mindful of how you break the precepts all the time as a human being. You have to be aware of how in the conventional world you cannot really perfect the precepts.

[07:12]

That's called perfecting the precepts in the conventional world, is to realize through the practice of precepts that you're a human being and not anything more. But when a human being realizes that she's just a human being and not anything more, a human being is a Buddha. That's all a Buddha is, is a human being that's nothing more or less than that. And that's also called practicing good and refraining from evil. But if you just say to people, well, just be yourself completely, then they say, okay, I'm myself, so I guess I'm refraining from evil and practicing good. I'm myself, I'll punch you in the nose, that's me. So that's refraining from evil and practicing good. Well, no. That's just your idea of it, and that you should realize is who you are, that you're a deluded person to think that way. In other words, you admit, I'm deluded to think that way. That's something you wouldn't act on, though.

[08:15]

because you realize how deluded you were. But rather than go into these in more detail, I want to now go into the conventional approach of doing good. So, in particular as bodhisattvas, or as those who who want to be bodhisattvas, or who at least say sometimes the bodhisattva vows, basically what this practicing good is about is that in all our actions, of body, speech, and thought, we direct ourselves towards the happiness of others. That's basically it. whatever we're doing, eating, drinking, sleeping, walking, sitting, standing, cleaning, working, defecating, washing, brushing, whatever we're doing all day long, our vow is to practice good, which means that our vow is to let all of our activities be for the benefit of

[09:43]

All beings. All beings. Now, if we can't do that, we work to approach that. If we can only once in a while, during some of our activities, let those activities be for the benefit of some people, then we start there. So once in a while somebody can let something that they're doing be for the benefit of somebody. That's where you start. And gradually you expand it into other activities and you dedicate it to more and more beings. And especially, start right off by mentioning, especially when we speak, we should only do so while considering the welfare of others. So there's innumerable, innumerable, there's innumerable, innumerable practices of good

[11:09]

Partly because there's innumerable, innumerable things you can do. And everything you do can be done for the welfare of others. So everything you do, everything that you do, everything that has ever been done could be a practice, an opportunity to have that thing be for the benefit of others. We don't have time to go into all that, of course, tonight. So we just pick a few kind of like I don't know, a few examples maybe. For example, one of the things to do, one of the ways to practice is that whatever you're doing with body, speech, and mind, you abandon your activities of body, speech, and mind. Got a body? Abandon attachment to it. That's how to have a body, in such a way that you can work for the welfare of others.

[12:11]

And so there's two main ways to abandon your attachment to your body. One, which is not popular these days, and that is to consider, you know, how your body is composed and consider, you know, get into considering You know, what's inside, like the phlegm and the blood and the urine and the piss and the lymph juice and saliva and snot, earwax, sebum, sweat. Anyway, all that stuff, that's one way to sort of like help yourself get along with The other way is to look at your body and try to find out what it is that you're attached to. Most people are attached to their body. Try to find out what it is that you're attached to.

[13:18]

And if you look deeply at whatever you're attached to, this analysis will finally lead you to find nothing that you're attached to, and that will help you not be attached to your body. Same with your speech. and your thoughts, basically renounce them. But renouncing doesn't mean trash your body, trash your speech, become a trashy speaker or something, start swearing a lot, or not talk at all. It doesn't mean that you trash your thoughts. It means basically, what it means to renounce your body is that you leave your body alone. When you've renounced your body, when you've abandoned your attachment to your body, you just let your body alone. But leaving alone, again, doesn't mean you don't take care of it. It means you just take care of it according to what it needs. So as you know, in Zen we say, eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're sleepy.

[14:20]

Even in this class, you can take a nap if you're tired. So there's a couch right here. You can all pile up right here. If you want to take a nap, right here. That's Zen, right? Take a nap if you're sleepy. I'm a little sleepy, but since I'm talking, I won't fall, I'm not gonna lie down. Same with your speech, leave your speech alone. Leave your thoughts alone. That's really what it means to renounce body, speech, and mind. And some other practices you can do, which also will be very easy to do if you renounce body, speech, and mind. If you haven't renounced body, speech, and mind, these various speeches of body, speech, and mind, which are activities of good, practicing good with body, speech, and mind, they'll be much easier if you've renounced body, speech, and mind because your attachments won't get in the way. If you're manipulating your mind, it's going to be hard for you to think in these good ways.

[15:24]

Harder, anyway. No hard. Hard. But if you're not attached to your body, it won't be so difficult to use it in these nice ways, because you won't have some agenda which says, hey, I can't do that. So I might mention some of these examples, and you might notice in some of the examples I mentioned, you might say stuff like, well, that's kind of dorky, or that's kind of blah, blah, blah, or you might say that because what I'm suggesting is not your style, perhaps. Even though you might think, well, actually, it's kind of good, you kind of think, well, you know, it's good, but it's kind of goody-goody-good. I don't want to do that. I want to stay cool. My friends will tease me, whatever, you know. Just leave your body alone and listen to these strange practices of doing good with your body. Okay? Say yes. See, some of you didn't say yes. You're attached to your mouth. You think, hey, I'm not going to say yes.

[16:27]

I've got better things to do than say yes. What is this kind of like, he's the boss and I'm going to say yes kind of thing? I'm going to be a good student. This kind of stuff happens in your head. But you should just abandon that stuff. When somebody says, say yes, you just say yes. Like a stupid little baby. Yes. That's Zen. He just says, blah, blah. You say yes. Did you ever see that movie Forrest Gump? He's in the army, and Jill Chardon says something like, Forrest, what are you here to do? I'm here to do exactly what you say, sir. This man is smart. He is brilliant. But, of course, you have to be a little retarded to say that. You know that this school is the school for retards, don't you? Yes. She is brilliant. In one shot, she understood it.

[17:28]

So you know stories about how stupid Suzuki Roshi was, right? He was really stupid. You want to hear it, don't you? I already told you, but you can't remember. You're his disciple. Anyway, he had a very strict teacher. You know about how strict his teacher was? He used to feed him rotten food. Not on purpose. That's all they had. The monks would rather eat nothing than eat rotten food. But the teacher would rather have them eat rotten food than eat nothing. So anyway, he gave them rotten food. And then when he wasn't looking, they would hide it, like bury it. One day they buried some turnips. The teacher somehow found them. I guess he was some kind of like a psychic or something. Or maybe they just didn't know. Maybe somebody snitched. But anyway, he found the turnip and dug them up and had them eat it. They got to wash them off and cook them again. But anyway, they ate them. And Sisakir said, I had a new understanding of food after that.

[18:33]

He said, I had a very strict teacher. All the other students ran away. Such a strict teacher. I would have run away too, but I didn't know I could. This is stupidity. The only stupid one is the one who became Zen master. The other guys were smart. They found better things to do. I don't know exactly what they did. Something smarter. Probably they joined the army and, you know, went and killed people in China. Yeah? It would be interesting to find out what they did. Yeah. They did some good stuff, probably. They helped the empire, I'm sure. Anyway, pure, pure, you know, pure goodness with your body, okay? Gotta be stupid to do it. There's some examples. Oh, I want to also mention too, I thought, did I say that even the very advanced bodhisattvas are willing to do these practices on the conventional level.

[19:35]

Even the bodhisattvas who are like totally beyond self and other, totally beyond like doing and not doing, they're way beyond karma, they're very happy to come back into the realm of karma and do karma with everybody else. So if we, we should also be willing to do it if they're willing to do it. Okay? Again, one, two, three. Yes. I wasn't even asking, thanks. No. Again, one, two, three. Suzuki Roshi one time said, well, you know, in the 60s, people heard about Zen. What's Zen? First you sit and count your breath. Then you do Mu. Then you do Shikantaza. So most of the people at Zen Center, of course, were doing Shikantaza. What's what? Oh, just sitting. So the highest practice is just sitting. You know, don't do anything. Just be yourself.

[20:35]

Okay? But first you have to go through these other stages. But most of the students want to get to the final stage right away. Anyway, at certain points the Guru said, okay, let's all count our breath. And I will too. So he was willing to go back and do the basic practice. I count my breath. So, pure conduct with your body. Practicing good with your body. When you're still and when you're moving, in all your movements and all your postures, try as much as possible to be considerate of others. Again, always, what will be helpful, what will be beneficial, what will make them happy, what will delight them in this world of suffering and keep them, you know, willing to stay here if you potentially practice the Buddha way. Like when you're handling things, got hands, palms and stuff, when you're handling things, you know, handle them gently with respect.

[21:44]

Be sensitive to the anxiety of tea bowls and pick them up and set them down with great care and quietly and gently. This is also in consideration of others. It means in consideration of the tea bowl on the table. It means in consideration of anyone who might see you or anyone who might find the tea bowl later in good condition placed nicely on the table. Don't move things around the world unnecessarily. Like, you know, don't fidget unnecessarily. If you have some kind of nervous condition, go ahead and fidget. But if you're not subject to some nervous problem, unless it's gonna be helpful to people, be still. Sometimes you should move things.

[22:50]

That's when it's necessary. Move them when they're necessary. Move your car when it's necessary. Move your bowl when it's necessary. But if it's not necessary, don't move things just out of nervousness. Move them only if it's necessary. Move them only if it's beneficial to others. Okay? So before you move a cup or a piece of furniture or your car or a book or your fingers or your mouth or your eyes, before you do it, consider whether it's beneficial. And if it is, then okay, then it's necessary. It is necessary to do good, so do it. Everything done with profound deliberation for the welfare of all beings. At the same time, with lightness and gentleness, not profound, you know, laying down, you know, necessarily. Sometimes it's good, but you don't have to, like, lay down the law, you know, bring the pillars in and set up the courthouse kind of thing.

[23:54]

It isn't like, boom, the tablets of Moses. It's kind of like setting things down. But with with lightness and gravity. Open doors and close them quietly. Gently. So One story, somebody can help me with this if they know it, but it's a story of... You know how you open... In Japan, they have these sliding doors. They have, like, different layers of sliding doors in the house. I have two stories about sliding doors, one of which I can't remember. But anyway, when you push them, you're like... Let's see, like, there's little things you push on. You go like... You push them with one hand.

[24:56]

First of all, you kneel. You don't just walk up to these doors and go like this. You kneel down. You put your hand on the whole thing and you push it. And then you push it with the other hand and up and down. Anyways, there's a definite way of doing it. Three different moves to open and close these doors and you kneel before you do it. Japanese people and even Japanese Zen monks can walk up to these doors and go like this. They can do that. And they can go like this, you know. They can do that kind of stuff, but they have this other way of doing it, which they learn. Through Zen training they learn it. And I don't know the story, but there's a story about that, of one of our teachers. in our lineage who didn't do it that way and got some got some kind of like training from his zen master and it was real intense made a good story does anybody know the story it's around somewhere i'll tell you if i ever find it then there's another story which i do remember and that is about the next layer of doors

[26:14]

The paper ones are called shoji, shoji doors, or shoji windows. The next layer outside are called the amado. They're the doors for, like, the heavy doors for, like, storms. They protect the paper doors or glass doors. And those, even the teahouse, you can see, they have, like, they have, like... They line them up in a row and they have storage boxes at the end of the row. So you can line up a whole pile of them like that in the storage boxes at the end of the opening of the door. So if you want to, and they have, if you want to, you can take the end of the row and you can push on the end of the row and then they'll make a little train out of the doors and push and they will, when they get to a certain place, they will jump. You can get them so they'll jump off the track into the, into the storage.

[27:19]

And so Suzuki Roshi and his other monks worked at Kishisawa Roshi's temple one time, and that's the way they were going to do it, but he discouraged them from doing it that way and had them put each door in separately, which means you can't put that door in first, so you go to the last door, the closest you can put it in, and you go get the next one. and bring it over and put it in. And you go get the next one and bring it over and put it in. Also, you might not get it from that instruction, but you wouldn't necessarily do that in the noisiest, quickest way. The point of this is not to get him in as fast as possible. The point is to develop a sense of doing everything while considering the maximum welfare of all beings. And it's, if you're really highly developed, you might be able to do that and, you know, move a window and consider that and still be moving really fast.

[28:28]

But if you actually take on that kind of consideration, it kind of goes with doing it very carefully. The carefulness, the step-by-step carefulness kind of goes with remembering now, what am I doing here now? Oh yeah, practicing good, that was it. What was it? Okay. And that kind of goes with each one being given attention. We don't have these sliding doors here, but we have many other things that slide or open that you can do the same practice with. If every time you slide these doors, you can do them as gently and carefully as possible in the spirit of, I open this door for the welfare of all beings. And you can see, you know, some people say, well, what's the good of opening a door quietly? Some people may feel that, who are right nearby. But there may be nobody else in the room who even sees you do it.

[29:31]

But you are training yourself at doing everything that way. So this will spread to the other parts of your life. Another one was when we moved into the building on Page Street, over at Sokoji, we really didn't have any chairs to speak of. But when we moved into the building there, we had a dining room with these tables and lots of chairs. And so, again, these... These brilliant Zen students knew how to move chairs around, to slide them across the floor. But like Suzuki Reshi said, it's already enough of a convenience that we have chairs. So when you move the chairs, pick them up off the ground and set them down. rather than sliding them to and fro. Now it turns out, coincidentally, although it didn't have to be that way, that in that particular dining room, in Still's case, if you move a chair in the dining room, the Zendo's downstairs, if you move a chair, it really makes a loud noise downstairs.

[30:35]

And so if we have Zazen before meals, and people upstairs are moving the chairs around, sliding them into place, it really makes a racket downstairs. But even if it didn't, the point is, pick the chair up, give it your attention, and set it down It's not just in Zen that people are aware of this. Emily Post also discovered this. It's just a sense of kindness to everything, to chairs, to bowls, to doors, to needles, to threads, to knives, to people, plants, to animals, everything. the welfare of all of creation. Always thinking of that with your body. And if possible, do this with nobody looking, when nobody's around.

[31:38]

And if possible, do it without This is sort of more over in the realm of thinking, but do it without sort of thinking how great you are for doing it. That's pretty tough. Especially when you get into the real subtle kindnesses. The little neat little things you do to sort of spiff up the monastery or the temple. Like the people who are going around picking up everybody else's marlin mugs, you know? And all the more if you do it at night when no one's washing and you carefully sneak them back into the kitchen with nobody watching and wash them and put them away. It's very difficult not to think, ooh. I mean, this is really good. You know, it is. It is really good. I mean, if you think about it, and it's okay to think about it, it is incredibly good. So it's okay to think how good it is. As a matter of fact, thinking how good it is is one of the practices called enthusiasm. And I'll talk about that if I have time, but basically you can think about how good it is without thinking about how you did it and how good you are for doing something really good.

[32:52]

Like you could even go and clean up after the raccoons. If you thought that was good for the raccoons and all sentient beings, and maybe it is. Before I go on to practicing good with the mouth, with speech, any questions about this? Yes, Tracy? How do you bring that kind of consideration, say, to your work where the request is pick it up or speed it up, you know, production? It's a production job. Just get it out, keep moving forward. And I find myself becoming less concerned about the details and more just, it's almost sloppy.

[34:06]

It's just the speed takes off. Yes. And I... Okay, I got it. I got it. This is a common question for Zen students. Again, consider what is going to be beneficial to others. So, it might be beneficial for others, but you forget about training yourself at this. Also, although I said to do things slowly and carefully in order to be aware, in order to keep in mind in spirit what you're doing this for, sometimes people ask you to do it faster than it's even Even better, to give up your whole agenda. Again, renounce your agenda of doing good in order to do good. Because they want you to do it another way. And maybe create more harmony for you to go along with it. But not always, but often it does.

[35:07]

It often helps for Zen students to give up their Zen thing when people ask them to. Now, when I was a little kid, I used to think, now I think, you know, if the whatevers came to America, you know, I don't know what, the Russians or the Nazis conquered America and they came in, they came walking across, you know, the plains into Minneapolis. They said, okay, any Christians here? Are you a Christian kid? I said, I thought, now would I sort of say, you know, I don't like Jesus just to protect myself? I used to wonder. And I think just to say I don't believe in Jesus when I was a kid or to say I'm not a Zen student or to, you know, say I'm not interested in practicing good to protect myself, that might not be good. But to give up Buddhism for the sake of others might be very good because when you give up Buddhism and really

[36:16]

It has to be Buddhism. Like Sukershi said, Buddhism is not one of those religions like Buddhism, Christianity. He didn't actually say that part about Buddhism, but I added that. I think that's better. Buddhism is not one of those religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so on. But add Buddhism to the list, right? That's better. Buddhism is not one of those religions like Buddhism, Christianity, so on and so forth. Buddhism is when any of those religions go beyond themselves. That's what Buddhism is. Okay? So, Zen practice is not, like, not one of these practices I told you. It's these practices I told you when they go beyond themselves. But to get to that point, you have to... If you're practicing carefully, it doesn't count if you give it up if you didn't want to do it anyway. Like, if you're doing some hard practice and then people say...

[37:18]

would you please, you know, give that practice up? Sure. I mean, I'm... I have no attachment to it. It's when you are doing the practice and you love it and you're successful at it and you're totally getting off on it and saving all sentient beings with it. And then they say, would you please come here and do something else? Fine. You know, it's to renounce what you love and are attached to, not what you're rather looking for some way to not do anyway. Like the people you have in the zendo, sometimes two for a zendo, sitting a long time, right? And someone comes in and says, okay, would someone, you know, somebody has to go work in the kitchen. Would you work in the kitchen? Okay. Now, people are sitting there like, when are they going to ring the bell? And somebody comes and says, could you leave this period a little early? Well, okay. I mean, that person should not go work in the kitchen.

[38:22]

So we should, we go in the kitchen with these, we have these infrared things. We can tell who's, you know, who wants the bell to ring. And we can tell who's like totally blissed out, like finally. I finally am sitting at peace. I'll sit here forever like this. Oh, my God. Finally, Buddhism's paying off. Peep, peep, [...] peep. Would you come work in the kitchen? Well, no thanks. Maybe later. The perfection of blissful meditation is achieved by giving it up so you get into blissful meditation or you get into some practice which is really fun to do you know and really beneficial to everyone which makes you so happy makes you so happy that it's beneficial people it's perfected by giving it up okay

[39:25]

So if you're enjoying being very carefully, like, I heard that they, what do you call it? I heard that they're getting a machine that would put one seed into one of those little seed pockets down the field, you know? The machine would go, because you know how they're kind of little and sometimes you can put two in by mistake and it takes a lot of time just to put one in right in the middle there and put the thing. I thought that was one of the greatest practices. I love to do that. And I heard they'd get the machine that would do it for us. We'd have it. Do we have it? And there's a strike or something, not being used. Anyway, when you get into it, when you really can plant that stuff that way and really get into it, then they come up and say, okay, now we have a machine or whatever, go faster. You give it up. That will perfect the mind, which is doing this so carefully for the welfare of all beings. It doesn't mean that you give up your vow, that you stop wanting to help all beings. You don't stop wanting to help all beings But you give it up, and then it becomes perfected. Because it's free of any attachment.

[40:28]

Or if there is attachment, then you find out, oh, I'm attached to my practice. Okay, well, then it surfaces that. So Suzuki Rishi says, sometimes I sit in zazen, and you know, I can sit there forever. But when the bell rings, I get up and do qin yin. Okay? Okay? So just a question. Does mindfulness necessarily equal slow? No, it does not necessarily equal slow. Like Kirk. Kirk practices certain martial arts forms. You can see him practicing. He's going really slowly, you know. to do these forms, right? Usually when you practice, you do them slowly, right? Most of the time? Yeah. But you're supposed to get this down so it's so much in your body that you can speed up, you know, do it exactly the same way.

[41:32]

And same with running. These runners, you know, they work on their form, they work on their form, and then when they get the form, then they go faster and faster and faster. So when the form's there, you can do it really slowly, but you can speed it up. But it's in you, you know? And then you can just crank it up according to circumstances. And sometimes it gives you more mindfulness as you crank it up. But that's why you have to have the form really deeply in you so that you can bring it up to a higher speed. And by learning the form, you have all that energy coming in through the form. And then you can use it at these other speeds. OK? So if you watch Zen monks work in Japan, sometimes they say in Japan, Zen is fast. And Zen is fast and on time in Japan. Kind of like the railroads. In Southeast Asia, it's a different culture.

[42:37]

It's hotter, blah, blah, blah. They tend to practice more slowly there. But one of the Theravadan teachers, Goenka, says, it is not necessary to do these mindfulness practices slowly. The thing that's necessary is to do them with your whole... That's what's necessary. And sometimes you're doing them, you feel like you're doing them with your whole body and mind, and then the way to do them with more of your whole body and mind is then to give them up That brings an aspect of your body and mind into it that you hadn't planned on. Okay? But, again, if you're just around with a bunch of the guys, you know, and you're doing some practice and they say, well, let's just speed up or let's just be sloppy, it isn't necessarily good to go along with that. But maybe it is. Can't say it. But the point is you can't be sure necessarily, but you're always considering, now, what will be beneficial? Will it be beneficial for me to speed up?

[43:38]

Experiment. Well, I guess I could give an example. I was really attached to something last night, and I had to give it up, and I got really angry. Uh-huh. And I felt this anger, and so I made an art piece because I had this anger, and I had to express this anger. Uh-huh. But, I mean, I find these emotions, really intense emotions coming up all the time. Yes. Is the practice then just to sit with that emotion, just to let that emotion be? Well, if you have an intense emotion that's coming up, yes, definitely let it be. However, in your example, it's a good example, which takes, which more goes, you know, it's an example I was going to use later, an example of giving, okay? The practice of giving. Okay. In the practice of giving, you're asked sometimes to give something up, right? Are you asked to, or you want to, or whatever? In the practice of giving, in any of these other practices, giving, you know, ethical observation, patience, whatever, enthusiasm, concentration, wisdom, all these practices, if you're considering doing them,

[44:59]

then if you have time, when you're considering doing something good like giving, then if you have time, then consider doing it more before you do it. If you have time, get into thinking about doing it before you do it. Don't give too hastily unless it's really necessary. If it's necessary, give right away. But if you have some time, get into it. Sometimes people, when I'm walking around, ask me for things. And sometimes... I feel like giving it to him. Well, let's just say sometimes I don't feel like giving it to him. And sometimes I feel like giving it to him, but I don't feel so good about giving it to him. What I sometimes say to people is, you want this? Can you wait here for a little while? I'll walk around the block and I'll come back and talk to you about it. And I walk around the block and think about giving it to him. So by the time I get back, I may be very enthusiastic about giving it to him. Sometimes people... I did that with one lady who asked for a lot one time.

[46:07]

If you give before you've considered whether you want to or not, if you give too much out of reflex, out of fear, or out of a sense of wanting to look good, or guilt, before you actually think about the act of giving not out of guilt, fear, or wanting to look good or get famous... or many other reasons you might do it other than the joy of giving, if you give it too fast without identifying your actual aspiration to give, what can happen is that you can not only avoid giving because you don't really want to give, but you can get angry and resentful. So... If you can, sometimes people ask you for stuff and you're already in the mood to really want to give it wholeheartedly right away and then you can do it very fast, but sometimes it takes you a while to get into it.

[47:11]

And even if you, even if you are ready to do something good, if you contemplate the goodness of doing it, then you can do it with more joy and more energy because you really have a strong aspiration to do it. So, if the issue of giving something away comes up, if possible, I recommend that you contemplate it until you feel like overflowingly, abundantly joyful at the prospect of giving it. So when you give it, you have really... you have really used it as long as you want to use it, and you really, truly want to give it away. The funny thing is that some things, if you give them away before you do that, you feel really bad, resentful, angry, and so on.

[48:11]

But actually, if you think about the thing, you actually maybe do want to give it away, but you need time to think of it. And if you don't give yourself that chance, well, you don't realize that you want to give it away, and you feel lousy. So I told this story before. I came home with a brand new automatic pencil one time and my wife said, can I have it? And I said, no, you can't. And the reason why I said that is because I didn't want to give it to her. And I felt guilty not giving it to her because, you know, how stingy, you know. My wife not giving her automatic pencil? I mean, I have a good wife, too. So, you know, this is like how cheap and chintzy of me. But I didn't get too much into that. Because I knew that if a cheap, chintzy person who doesn't want to give it to her, that I'd just get angry at her later. And I would have.

[49:13]

And I wasn't going to let her pressure me into giving it to her and make her into a thief. So I just said, no. And then I, from right away, I started thinking about giving it to her. And I thought about this way of, I thought about it this way and I thought about it that way. And I found a way of thinking about it that I kind of like felt good. And gradually, the stinginess, the part that wanted to hold on and didn't feel good about giving it away, just sort of stayed about the same size and strength it was. But the joy and the thought of giving it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until the joy of giving it, the volume and intensity of giving it got so big that the little stingy attachment was like really puny and not very comfortable anyway. So it just kind of fell off into I don't know where. It was still in there a little bit. But the joy of giving was so strong and I gave it the next day. Actually, I wrapped it up in a nice little package and gave it as a gift the next day. But I needed a while to generate that aspiration to identify it.

[50:16]

Because, you know, see, part didn't want to give and a little bit did want to give. But I didn't want to give it in that kind of thing of where they were kind of like approximately equal and where giving was maybe slightly bigger or slightly less than keeping. You want the giving to be incomparably bigger than the holding on. And the thing is, you can make it incomparably bigger because you can generate this in your mind by continuously thinking how nice it would be to give, how much you would enjoy it, and how great it would be. And if you give something to somebody, even something small, if you give it with that kind of joy, then the gift is much greater because of the joy you give to them. I mean, the joy you have of giving. They feel that. So there's a practice, and you can do it with all the other practices too. Does that make sense to you, Yaya?

[51:17]

Yes. Okay, so then next comes... Yes? About the happiness of others. Yes? Like, you know how we seem to restrict ourselves by thinking that we are certain kind of people and we like certain things and don't like certain things? Yes. How we make ourselves smaller than we might really be? Yes. So, like, if I'm asking somebody, would you like a car for your birthday? And that person would say, oh no, I don't need a car. And then... I might be thinking, well, so I guess it makes that person happier if I don't get settled for 12th birthday. But if I would, they would be very happy. You know what I mean? I miss that part of, if you would, they would be very happy. Well, like my dad, you know, I used to say to him, would you like a day timer for your birthday? And he would say, well, no, I don't need a day timer. A day timer? Yeah. And then I would give him a day timer and then he would be very happy. So...

[52:17]

How do you know what makes people happy? You don't know what makes people happy. I mean, I don't know what makes people happy. I have some hunches and, you know, and I act on those hunches, but I don't know that it will. The thing is that your primary concern is what makes them happy. That's your primary concern. It doesn't mean you know that it will. But that's your concern. Well, I guess, how do you distinguish whether you're attached to a certain idea about a person, what will make them happy, and what your intuition, your true intuition is of what will really make them happy? How do you distinguish between what you think will make them happy and your true intuition of what will make them happy? You know what I mean? Intuition like you know, like it's not attached to your ego. Well, my intuition where I know, where it's not attached to my ego, is the place where I don't know.

[53:25]

But sometimes you get a hunch of what that could be. Well, all my hunches are ego connected, because they're my hunches. But it is possible to act, like it says in the Jewel-Mir Samadhi, although it's not fabricated, it's not without speech. There's an unfabricated place. In ultimate practice, there's a place that has nothing to do with being or not being, doing or not doing, where actions spontaneously pop out. If you just sit still, if you really know what that means, just sit still and be yourself, goodness just oozes out of you spontaneously. And in that case, you do not know that it will be good. You don't need to know that when people do good things, you don't need to know that they're good. You don't need to know that it's good when it's good. But when you're about to do something, when you're about to do something, you're in the realm of thinking.

[54:28]

And there, you'd like to know what was good. However, nobody knows what's good Actually, no person knows what's good. Good is determined by everybody together. I don't get to say, okay, now I'm going to like give Tia a dollar and that's good. She has nothing to say about that. She might say, it wasn't enough. You should have given me five. That was really stingy and obnoxious of you. Or she might have said that was too much. You should have given it to Kirk. That was really rude. You know? The money was not for Kirk, not for me. You really blew it there. I don't think that was good at all. I don't get to decide. Also, the fact that she thought it was not good doesn't mean that she's right either. It's not that she determines what's right and what's good, or I determine what's right or good. What's good is what we all agree on as good.

[55:29]

And that good... is what we're striving for. We're striving for a good which isn't just good for me or for you. It isn't just what I think is good or what you think is good. It's what we both think is good. And not only what we both think is good, but what everybody thinks is good. Sometimes two people can do something together they both think is good, but other people don't like it. Of course, there's also the case where one person does something the other person they think is good or good for them and the other person does not agree. I don't think this is good for me. You're screaming at me. I do not appreciate this. You're punching me. This is not good for me. I do not appreciate this. You are hitting me. I do not like being punished this way. I do not like being hit. Stop it. Now, is it right that the person who's being hit is right and it's not good for them? I don't think so. Is it right that the other person's... Is the other person right that they're hitting him? I don't think so. What is good? Good at that time is hard to see.

[56:33]

It's hard to see the goodness when two people are fighting like that. Where's the good in that case? Well, let's look for it, shall we? And it has something to do with what they both agree is good. Now, you can say to a child when you're taking off... you know, pulling a bandaid off them or something like that, you say, as it's ripping off, you can say, is this good? And they might say no. They might say no at that time, but their no does not mean that that's true, that their no is not true, that that's not good. And you're also, you're saying that pulling it off is good. That also doesn't make it good. Do you understand? The child says, or the person who's getting the band-aid ripped off, says, if asked, they would say, no, it's not good. And you say, oh, yes, it is good. The good will be what you, maybe later, will be able to agree on.

[57:34]

With everybody else in the universe also, that will be the good. You don't know that. However, it is exactly what you are. You are exactly that good. That's who you are. That's what you are, before you do anything. If you know that, you might be right, but it's extra. If you're in the realm of doing things, then before you do them, you try your best to ascertain and guess whether it'd be good. But you don't have to know something's good to want it to be good. However, wanting it to be good is not enough. But again, even though I said it's not enough, that doesn't mean you make it enough by putting on to it that you know it's right. That's what we usually do. We want to do good. If we want to do good, we want to do good. And then we feel that we don't know if it's good.

[58:36]

So then we can't stand that anxiety about whether it really is. So then we confer goodness upon it. In other words, we feel more comfortable if we're self-righteous. But it's not really more comfortable. It's just covering up our anxiety by shellacking it with our own sense of righteousness. People seem to be asleep on that one. Just stunned. Stunned? Stunned. I'm stunned. You're stunned? Just thinking about it. I think it's great. Maybe it isn't. Let's see. We'll see. We'll see.

[59:37]

Catherine? Yeah, I... How hard do you say in the beginning that one of the things we should stop doing or give up is manipulating our thoughts and speech? Well, if you give up your thoughts and speech, then you're simultaneously giving up manipulating them. I was wondering if you could maybe explain what that means, because when I heard your example about giving, and you sort of tried fostering yourself, it's on the side of you that wants to give. That sort of feels to me like manipulating, like telling yourself. Could you hear what she said? She felt like she was manipulating herself, or kind of working herself up into a froth. Like manipulating, like... Right, Des? Right? So, if possible, you should do that manipulation with a sense of abandoning manipulation.

[60:42]

You see, you're going, no, no. I want to hold on to understanding what you're talking about. I'm not going to go for that one. Anyway, I can understand that I can follow very easily and understand that you might think that that was a manipulation. Okay? So let's think that's a manipulation. Alright? That's a thought. Alright? Perfectly good thought. That sounds like manipulation to me. Okay? Now, abandon that thought. that it's manipulation means, just let that be a thought that that's manipulation, rather than your thought. I just thought, he said that, and to me that sounds like manipulation. Therefore, we got a problem here. Now, is that real? I mean, is that true that this is manipulation? Well, looks like you thought it was.

[61:49]

You were considering maybe, you were asking me, but you know, you kind of thought maybe that was true that that was manipulation. In other words, you didn't just have this image, that sounds like manipulation. You thought, well, I think that actually is, that would be manipulation. Okay? So it wasn't just an image of manipulation. It was like, that's reality, that's really manipulation. Making that into a real, that you actually spotted manipulation as it really exists in this world, that's called not leaving the thought of that's manipulation alone. So then you might say, well, then we should avoid that kind of thing because that would be manipulation. No, avoiding it would be more manipulation. Avoiding its manipulation and doing its manipulation, okay, and thinking that's true manipulation. But it is possible to do anything. It's possible to be stingy, you know, just be stingy and leave the stinginess alone. and abandon the stinginess.

[62:51]

And it's just a perfectly good case of stinginess. Just let it be stinginess. That's it. Without trying to hide it, or kind of like, what can I do so nobody will find out that I'm stingy, and even especially me? What could I do now to not know and be aware that I'm a stingy guy? Well, I could try to practice giving. But the thing is about practicing giving is it doesn't put you into denial about your stinginess. It leaves the stinginess alone. And you can still be aware. That's part of the fun of giving is a stingy person like me can be totally enthusiastic about giving something. I mean, really enjoy giving something and simultaneously be a stingy person. Not touching the stinginess. And also, the greatest joy of giving is when you give and jazz yourself up like this and get yourself totally enthusiastic without manipulating yourself.

[63:55]

When you realize that you're not doing this to get anything, you're not even doing it to get the joy, you just think about how good it is and you get happier and happier. It's actually perfectly natural. If you're trying to manipulate yourself, that will cut into your joy. If you try to stop yourself from giving or try to control the way you get, you know, any of that stuff will be manipulation. But, again, learning this way, learning the ropes of this conventional approach is, you know, constantly juggling your dualistic approach. And the more skillful we get through this, finally we get to a point where we're not doing anything at all. And abandoning or renouncing our worldly affairs or abandoning our thought processes or abandoning attachment to body and so on and so forth is actually, in the end, isn't doing anything.

[65:00]

It's just being yourself. That's who you really are, is a person who is constantly dropping yourself off and dropping your habits and moving on to the next thing. Okay, next one is kind speech. Of course, you know, speech as a way to work for the welfare of others. So basically, it's called kind speech. Again, to say things that will make people happy. Not to flatter them necessarily, although that sometimes makes them happy. But maybe somehow do the place where making them happy overlaps with what's beneficial. So can you say something which gives people delight which isn't flattery? Try to find that place. Because that would be, maybe you might think is the most beneficial place.

[66:03]

Where you make them happy and delight them in what you're saying. Not necessarily about them, but just what you're saying. And it could be about them. But it doesn't have to be about them. But anyway, not necessarily flattery, but it makes beings happy and it gives them welfare. And if you are talking about somebody, Say things about them that if they hear by rumor, they'll be happy to hear. It's not necessarily beneficial to praise people to their face.

[67:13]

Sometimes it's hard on people if you praise them to their face. So you have to take that into consideration. It may set them back or distract them if you praise them to their face. But again, shifting back into the mind, there's almost no exception to this, that we do not spend our time thinking about the faults of others, or do we do confess and examine our own faults? This is a beneficial way of thinking, to not think of other people's faults, to not even think of them, but to notice, confess, and examine our own And to think of other people's good qualities and to not spend our time thinking of our own virtues.

[68:28]

And if you see somebody doing something good, something virtuous, then by all means sing praises of their virtues and talk to other people about Tell others about this person's good qualities. When you start talking out loud, then it's speech. But before you talk, you're thinking about not how bad you are, just simply your mistakes and your shortcomings. Just considering them and examining them. That protects you and other beings from you and from harm. Then in addition to that, in order to not just protect, but to promote benefit, you then rejoice and praise others' virtues. Generally speaking, we do not, although this is not, it might be some exception, we do not generally speaking praise people's non-virtues.

[69:43]

I haven't heard about that practice. But we, definitely, it's helpful to praise their virtues. Now some people, when you look at them, it may be hard to find their virtues. Especially if they're, you know, I don't know what, if they're making certain kind of faces at you. They're really putting you to the test to try to, you know, be able to see any virtues. But still, among all the various things you can do with your mind that are good, in some sense, if you can just keep tuned in to the virtues of others and confess and examine your own faults, that pretty much takes care of how to think. noticing, confessing and examining my own faults will lead to me abandoning them, will lead to my mind being tamed.

[71:04]

Praising the faults of others, praising the virtues of others will also tame my mind. Telling others about how good these people are And if they're also praising people, to join in the praise and further elaborate the good things they're saying, this trains my mind, this is me practicing good, and it also benefits others. And I'm doing it to train myself and to benefit others. And I'm training myself in order to benefit others. So, these practices, when done more and more thoroughly, finally take you to a place where you go beyond doing these practices. In one sense, you do them so thoroughly you forget about them.

[72:14]

You could say they become natural in a way. But, they also might almost disappear for a while. Even though you've been doing them very intensely up to a certain point. You might stop thinking that way. And there might be no sign of these practices anymore. In other words, a bodhisattva who has done these practices very thoroughly, you might not actually hear them anymore saying, they might go through the whole day, you might not hear them say, oh, I'm rejoicing at the good qualities of others. I'm so happy to see how great this person is doing. And you might not see them looking into themselves and catching their non-virtue. You might not see that. And yet they might be doing

[73:16]

the good which emerges from that practice. They might be doing a good which is actually beyond this form. Like for example, they might be sitting still silently, not thinking of anything. And that completely includes this practice of good. And there's no characteristics or sign by which you could tell that it was good.

[74:23]

And it would be good. That no one can measure, that cannot be measured, that no one knows about. But the practices I've been talking about are the way a person who's thinking gradually works up to that point of the goodness which is beyond our thinking, of the goodness when you let go of, you know, and go beyond your idea of practicing good. A goodness which is exactly just you being yourself. It is the goodness of practicing all the precepts perfectly.

[75:35]

It is the goodness of practicing all the precepts perfectly, but it's not you doing the practice yourself. It is you yourself as you are The fact of the way you are is the practice of the precepts. But no one can get a hold of this. No human being can reach this. And yet, it is exactly a human being being herself. Nothing more, nothing less. And this is based on the way you already are. Always have been and always will be. It's not based on you getting any better than you are. And that's how the logic of praising the virtues of others ultimately reaches this point.

[76:50]

And forgetting, not talking about the faults of others, ultimately reaches this point. I wouldn't even say it's our inherent goodness that is good. I won't say it's our inherent goodness because goodness is not inherent. The way you are is not inherent. It's just the way you are at this moment. You've never been this way before. You'll never be this way again. But the fact that you're this way now, which is not inherent to you, is just a temporary thing. But the fact that you're this way right now is goodness. Not the way you are.

[77:54]

The way you are is not goodness. But the fact that you are the way you are is your goodness. And that will never go away and will never come. That is always there and therefore you can always praise this in others. It's always there. How about praising it to yourself? You don't praise it to yourself. What you do if you believe in this in yourself is you do something much more difficult and much more effective. You take all your goodness and don't speak about it. Don't waste any time talking about it. And you simply concentrate it into one point and be that, which is exactly you. You completely include it all, so you just be yourself.

[78:55]

And that is all your goodness without you doing anything. And then from that, infinite good comes forth. However, you can't jump into that place by skipping over working with this dualistic approach. Because when you're at that place, you're perfectly willing to do all these dualistic things. Because you are a dualistic being. And once again, the fact that you're a dualistic being is not good. It's not bad either. It's just a dualistic being. That's not good. That's not permanent. That's impermanent. Constantly changing according to circumstances. But the dualistic condition being that you are, being that very thing, that is goodness.

[80:11]

And that is all pervasive. Everything is that way and goodness is everywhere. And that goodness is permanent, unimpeded. And each of us in this room now is in a particular skin bag with particular problems and that's our job is to accept that and to go straight into that and to perfectly be there And I would say, finally, that in order to inhabit your conditioned being, your dualistic self, you need to develop these dualistic practices. Otherwise, you're just dreaming of being yourself.

[81:17]

But by doing these dualistic practices, you find out you're clean. You find out your miserliness. You find out your fear. You find out your attachments. That's where you live. And that's the place you have to be in all the grisly details. And that's what you have to leave alone. I heard you say earlier that there's a leap from the conventional to the dualistic to the ultimate. I don't think I said there is a leap exactly like you would leap. It's that when you're yourself in a dualistic way, that leaps. The impeccability leaps. You don't leap. You do, [...] do up to impeccability and then the impeccability drops off and there's a leap.

[82:24]

But you don't leap. That's one of the last things you have to overcome is thinking you're going to do the leap. The leap is spontaneous. It is the natural conclusion to your human effort is that there is a leap Where you don't go, you get left behind. And it saves you.

[82:53]

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