Peaceful and relaxed at the end. We did a service for him at No Abode on Saturday around noon and we also did a ceremony for him last night at Green Gulch after our koan class. If any of you wish to reach out to Elena Karen, do you have any suggestions how to do that? Do you have her telephone number? You might? Yeah, so could people ask you for it afterwards if they wish? Thank you. Last week, Karen missed class to be with Elena.

[01:07]

Is that right? Yeah. And people from Green Gulch stayed with him on the final nights. And one of the people at Green Gulch was with him when he passed away and helped Elena. So... In gratitude for Fred, we will continue to study the teachings and the practices. I want to repeat again that

[02:15]

We often say that to learn the Buddha way is to learn the self. And to learn the self is to become free of the self. We become free of the self by learning about it. And I say again to you that the self lives in consciousness. And consciousness exists in dependence on self. Without self there's no consciousness. There is life, there can be life, and there can be mind, there can be unconscious mind, and a very vital situation with an unconscious mind.

[03:30]

But conscious mind, there's a self present. And I also have mentioned to you that people often say to me stuff like, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the self. I'm sick of myself. And I'm sick of other people's concern with their self. I can't stand this me, me, me. And also, I want to escape. I want to escape from I-consciousness. I want to escape from self-consciousness. Many humans say this to me, and often being quite open to me pointing out that if there's a wish in consciousness,

[04:47]

to be free of self and all its vicissitudes, then the path of freedom from this sickening situation is to be compassionate with it and study it. To compassionately study consciousness is the path to be free of self, self-concern, It's the other word. Self-centeredness. Anyway, self-consciousness. Being free of self-consciousness, you are free of suffering. Suffering exists in self-consciousness. And when self-consciousness and the self that's in that consciousness are not understood, things are more or less stressful, and there's more or less unskillful action.

[05:53]

There can be skillful action in self-consciousness. There can be, fortunately. But often there is great unskillfulness arising in self-consciousness, which is the same as unskillfulness arising in consciousness. And the more the self is understood, the more skillful the actions that arise, the more skillful the actions that arise, the more deeply the self is understood, until the skillful actions and the study of the self come to the point of understanding it thoroughly, deeply, and then there's liberation. Not by destroying the self, but by understanding it. Did I say something like this before?

[06:58]

May I say it again and again and again until it sinks in and you never forget it all day long? You never forget what? To be compassionate to the consciousness where there's a self. and to be compassionate to all the stress and suffering that may exist there. Somebody also has pointed out, and so now I will be that somebody, that the teaching to study the Buddha ways to study the self comes from a 13th century Zen teacher named Dogen. And the word he uses for learn is narao in Japanese, narao, which means to learn or study.

[08:01]

And it has some ideograms in it which are the wings of a bird. And it refers, in a sense, to the way birds learn to fly. at least the way some people think they do. And the way some people think they learn to do it is, first of all, be a bird. First you've got to get bird genes, bird chromosomes and stuff, bird mother, bird father. And then you're in the nest. And then the final part of the training is that you watch your mother and father fly. And then you imitate them. and at some point you give it a try. So another way to translate this would be to imitate the Buddha way is to imitate the self.

[09:02]

Or another way to say it is to model the Buddha way is to model the self. And another way to say it is to model yourself on the Buddha way is to model yourself on yourself. And that might be nauseating, but it can get like that. And then we practice compassion towards self, [...] self. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. I want to get out of I. Me wants to get out of me. Okay, so I used to take courses in psychology at the University of Minnesota. And I was a major in mathematics, but I got such good grades in biology and I was not very good at mathematics.

[10:11]

Although I didn't fail out, but I I realized as I was about to graduate in mathematics that for me mathematics was a second language. And for some of my friends it was a first language. And I could have gone on, but for me it was like English to mathematics, mathematics to English. For some of my friends it was mathematics to mathematics and mathematics to mathematics. So I thought, well, I'll be kind of a second class mathematician compared to my friends. So I switched to psychology, partly because I got good grades and partly because I could talk to my girlfriends about it. But very few of them wanted to talk about math. There were some girls in the math department, but not very many. But there are a lot of girls in the psychology department.

[11:14]

Psychology classes had just about as many girls as boys. So I switched to psychology, and I came to understand that introspection was not really part of the deal in the middle of the 20th century. It was not a valid scientific method of studying psychological processes. I was kind of sorry about that actually, because I thought introspection had some validity, but I guess at that time in science it was not considered valid. Ladies and gentlemen, starting about the time I dropped out of psychology in 1970, it started to become valid. And now it's well established that part of that introspection is part of the scientific study of consciousness.

[12:22]

Not just introspection, also neurological experimentation and study, but it has now been resuscitated as part of scientific investigation. I sort of knew that there was a time when introspection was considered a valid aspect of psychological study. And one of those times was the time of a person named William James, a philosopher and a psychologist And his brother was a novelist, Henry. And I think he had a... Anyway, he had a brother named Henry. And they said his brother Henry wrote novels that were psychology, and William James wrote psychology that was like novels.

[13:34]

Anyway... He wrote a book called The Principles of Psychology, which is highly respected by Buddhist scholars of Buddhist psychology. One Buddhist scholar wrote a book called Principles of Buddhist Psychology in homage to William James, Principles of Psychology. reading a little bit of this book, I'm in awe of this amazing person. Still, with the, you know, it's, with the aid of Buddhist teachings, I feel, well actually I wish he was alive so he could hear. some of my comments about what he says in the context of Buddhist realizations. But anyway, he's basically wonderful.

[14:40]

And there's a section in here which is called The Method and Snares of Psychology. So the first part of the book is talking about the body. And then he switches to, we have now finished the physiological preliminaries to our subject and must in the remaining chapters study the mental states themselves which the cerebral conditions and concomitants have been hitherto considered. So he says psychology is a natural science And he says some other stuff, but I'll skip it and go to a little bit later where he says method of investigation. for psychology as a natural science, the method of investigation for psychology as a natural science is introspection.

[15:49]

Introspection. Introspective observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. He could say this around 1900. Well, actually 1890, 1890. And there he was saying that the word introspection need hardly be defined. It means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. Everyone agrees that we there discover states of consciousness. So far as I know, the existence of such states has never been doubted by any critic.

[16:52]

What states? States of consciousness. However skeptical in other respects he may have been, that we have cogitations of some sort, is the incusum. In a world most of whose other facts have at some time tottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. all people unhesitatingly believe that they feel themselves thinking and that they distinguish the mental states as an inward activity or passion from all other objects which it may be cognitively dealing. I regard this belief as the most fundamental of all postulates of psychology.

[17:59]

And I shall discard all curious inquiries about its certainty as too metaphysical for the scope of this book." So, number one, the method is introspection, looking inward, studying consciousness where there's a self. Number two, everybody feels that they are thinking and that their thinking is inward. However, I just might mention that although many people, if not everybody, feel that they are thinking, many people think that what they're thinking about is not inward. Most people feel that their thinking is inward. Okay? And most people think or understand that what they're thinking about is often outward.

[19:09]

But according to Buddhist teaching, the thinking is inward and what you're thinking about is inward. You cannot really think about outward things. You can just think of the idea that they're outward. But the idea that things are outward is inward. Mr. James may be educating us to that later, but right now he's not. But I mention it to you as an important aspect of learning about the self. The contents of consciousness are inner, and the contents of consciousness are the appearance of a world. The appearance of Berkeley, for example, is an example of the contents of consciousness. In my consciousness, a Berkeley is appearing. It's a lovely place. It's an amazing place. And it's also, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, a wonderful documentary called Berkeley.

[20:16]

It's four hours long. showing in a limited number of theaters. You'll eventually be able to get it on DVD. It's four hours long, and it's about the University of California, Berkeley. And when you watch it, you will be watching appearances in your inner consciousness, and you may think it's about something external, but it's not. The self which is watching most people realize is inner. The consciousness of the movie, of Berkeley, most people know the consciousness is inner and they can look in to find it. They don't usually think that if you look at the Campanile that that's a way to study your consciousness, but it is. It's the contents. Then he goes on a little bit to talk about nomenclature.

[21:26]

By the way, the word nomenclature comes from the Latin word nomenclator. Did you know that? You didn't? Well, now you do. And the Latin word nomenclature was the word for the person that the upper class Romans had walking at their side who would tell them the names of the people that they were meeting. That guy works for the Zuster's net company. Oh, that lady's very rich, and her name is Lois. Oh, and over there, that's Jerry. Jerry. Hello, Jerry. So these people had these nomenclators next to them. Yeah, they can be hired. And you can hire them very inexpensively because like, you know, the minimum wage is what now?

[22:36]

Huh? About ten? Huh? What? Seven? Nine? You could hire some kid, you know, for ten dollars or twelve dollars an hour and they could know the names of everybody very fast and keep track of it for you. I mean, you know, you could afford a teenage nomenclature. So he's talking about nomenclature for what? Well, the consciousness of What should we call consciousness? And he says, we ought to have some general term by which to designate all states of consciousness merely as such and apart from their particular quality or cognitive function. He wants a general term for consciousness. But he doesn't want to use consciousness, I guess. Unfortunately, most of the terms in use have grave objections.

[23:38]

mental state, states of consciousness, conscious modification are kubris and have no kindred verbs. States of consciousness don't have a kindred verb. Right? You can't states of consciousness. To states of consciousness, He wants to use a term that can be a verb, which is, I think, brilliant of him, wise of him. Consciousness is not just a state, it's a verb, too. It's a process. It's an action. And it's a state. But it's a state that's a verb. So he wants to find states that can be verbs. Okay, so then he says... The same is true of subjective condition. Consciousness is a subjective condition, wouldn't you say? But it's hard, it's cum, it's, what is it?

[24:44]

It's cumbrous, cumbrous. Hmm? Cubrous, cubrous, cubrous, cubrous. Back in, back in 1880, Ordinary people, not just philosophers, had a very vivid English vocabulary. There's a new movie about if you want to meditate, you try to be compassionate towards cruelty. There's a new movie you can use. It's called Twelve Years a Slave. And there we see human beings being very cruel to human beings. But the slave drivers and the slave owners and the slaves all have quite vivid vocabularies.

[25:48]

It's amazing. Did you look it up? No. Oh. No. So, anyway, subjective state also doesn't have a, what do you call it, a verb, a kindred verb. Feeling has the verb to feel, both active and neuter, and such derivatives as feelingly, felt, feltness, etc., which make it extremely convenient, right? So Mr. Dr. William James is thinking of maybe using feeling as a general term for consciousness. So the title of this course was Mind, Feeling and Emotions, or Emotions and Feelings. So now I'm kind of moving towards this.

[26:51]

and I expand the title to be Mind Consciousness. feeling and emotions. And when I say consciousness, so I mean mind, consciousness, self, feeling and emotions. Those terms, I think, that kind of covers it, actually, the stuff to study. And just to say, for starters, I'm suggesting also, right, oh, and Gay White, Donald's successor as director of the Yoga Room, when I gave the title, she says, but emotions and feelings are the same. And I said, well, just leave it like that. And she's right. Emotions and feelings are the same. But feelings are kind of the root of all emotions. And so if you look up the word emotion, I mean the word feeling... In the definition of the word feeling, basically the definition is an emotional state or an emotional reaction.

[28:09]

I agree. It is an emotional state. But I do not think that all emotions can be derived from all emotions. But all emotions can be derived from feeling. Feeling, although it is an emotional state, it's kind of the root emotional state. And then if you look at synonyms for the emotion called feeling, basically they write all the feelings as synonyms. Almost all of them. They don't write... I take it back. They don't write all of them. They don't write hate. But they might. I could have gone on. Maybe I would have found hate on the list eventually. Because you can have a feeling of hate, right? You can have a feeling of hate and a feeling of love, but you can't have

[29:21]

a loving hatred. You can't have a hatred loving, but you can have a feeling of loving, and you can have a feeling of hatred. Anyway, the synonyms for feeling are love, affection, emotion. Synonym for feeling is emotion, sentiment, tenderness, warmth, and on and on. Second meaning of feeling is a belief. especially a vague, irrational one, synonyms suspicion, notion, inkling, hunch, fancy, idea. Idea. Feeling is an emotion or it is a basic emotion and feeling is also an idea. For example, the idea that you're thinking. is also the feeling that you're thinking.

[30:23]

It's an idea, it's an image. And that's as a noun. As a noun, it's an emotion or a reaction, and it's a belief. As an adjective, it's showing emotion or sensitivity. Sensitive, warm, tender, caring, sympathetic, kind, compassionate, understanding, thoughtful. I have been doing some kind of ground-up discussions with you. Now I'd like to do a sort of top-down discussion. And maybe I'll just start with a top-down discussion of feeling from the traditional Buddhist analysis.

[31:33]

The traditional Buddhist analysis of feeling, which in Sanskrit is vedana, the word Veda now is translated as feeling, but it's also translated as sensation. And also feeling is sometimes translated, part of its list of synonyms is sensation, and also part of the, what do you call it, the word consciousness is also sometimes is a sensation. In the Buddhist analysis, feeling is, you could say, of six types. Usually they mention it's of three types. Usually they start with it's three types. And the three types are pain, pleasure, and neutral. Are those emotions?

[32:36]

Yes. Some people might not think so. The feeling of pain, the feeling of pleasure, and the feeling of, actually it says neutral, but another way to say it is you can't tell. And I think this is, what do you call it, Buddhist teachings one could mention at this point are ideas. Buddhist teachings are ideas. Buddhist teachings, not fundamentally, but as they appear in our consciousness, they're ideas which we can see, which we can be aware of. So here's an idea that feeling is pain, pleasure, and neutral, or pain, pleasure, and it's hard to tell which. Pain, pleasure are indeterminant. But I just would say, for starters, that another way to think of it is that feeling is a range of states that include pain and pleasure.

[33:40]

And some of my friends are being asked, you know, from 1 to 10, how much pain is there? You know? Like I had a heart attack one time and said, from 1 to 10, what kind of pain are you feeling in your chest? And I said, well, about 2%. Two. Wasn't that bad. So we have pain, but actually we have pain from one to ten, or we have pain from one to a hundred. But certainly a lot of people can do one to ten, apparently. Like they say, two, three, five, eight. Sometimes they say ten. We don't usually say from one to a hundred. For pleasure we can say from one to a hundred, I guess. But really it's like there's some places where between pain that's around one and pleasure that's around one where it's kind of hard to, well, so it's really a kind of a continuum.

[34:51]

And then another level would be to say, well, actually, there's six kinds of feeling. Three mental and three physical. And that the three mental, I would say, are the three you're conscious of. So really it's not three mental and three physical. It's three conscious and three unconscious. The conscious ones appear where there's a self. And now I just want, I'll come back to this for more detail later, but now I just want to move over to, in the study of the self, in the tradition of the Buddha, they suggest that the personality of, for example, a human being, their personality has five, they say five aggregates or five heaps of

[36:01]

that all the phenomena that are appearing in a personality, or I could say all phenomena, everything that appears, everything that occurs in conscious space, in self-consciousness, there's five different categories that will account for anything that arises there. The first category which in some ways is sometimes considered easiest to see or grossest, is called form. And form includes the five sense capacities, the physical capacity, the capacity which is physical of seeing, hearing. Not seeing, hearing. The physical organ of seeing, the physical organ of hearing, the physical organ of smelling, the physical organ of tasting, and the physical organ of touch.

[37:13]

Touch being the most basic. And then going with them are the fields in which these organs function, the field of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles. Those are the form phenomena of a personality. And they, as I pointed out before and I'll do it again, they are sort of the basis for the arising of consciousness, for the arising of feelings and the arising of self. The next aggregate is feeling. And that feeling is the one that comes in those three varieties, which are really shorthand for lots of varieties.

[38:22]

But in general, pain, pleasure, and hard to tell which. And the teaching says, how come that third aggregate, Or maybe I'll go on. The next one is sometimes called perception or conception. And in conception or perception can be the infinite number of ideas that we can be aware of or be involved with. The next one is called mental formations, and in there are the rest of the emotions. Greed, hate, and delusion. Different kinds of fear. Different functions of the mind. Basic functions of the mind, like the way the mind, the way the awareness turns towards the object.

[39:31]

the way the awareness is focused one pointedly on the object called samadhi and also the way that the whole field of emotion in a state of consciousness where there's a sense of self a sense of self which is going to be one of these things it's going to be an idea or a feeling and Other emotions like pain or pleasure, or like greed or hate, or like faith, or like a feeling of nonviolence or a feeling of violence, a feeling of diligence or a feeling of negligence, all these different emotional responses to what's appearing in consciousness are in the fourth aggregate. And the fifth aggregate is consciousness but it's it's not the consciousness it's the conscious consciousness it's not the basic unconscious support for consciousness it is the consciousness where there's a self so in this aggregate situation five aggregate situation this is describing a personality where there's like a person

[40:53]

where there's a self. It has these five aggregates. And the second one is feeling. And I remember when I first read the question, why does feeling get to be an aggregate all by itself when the next one has all these different ideas, all the different perceptions, and the next one has all these emotions? Why among all the emotions, really, does feeling get its own aggregate? And the answer is because feeling is most closely related to self. And it's the self, it's the self which must be understood. This description of these five aggregates is to help us understand the self. Because not understanding that leads to grasping the contents of consciousness And grasping the content of consciousness is the definition of suffering.

[42:00]

If you grasp colors, if you grasp feelings, if you grasp ideas, if you grasp hatred, if you grasp fear, if you grasp greed, if you grasp diligence, if you grasp negligence, if you grasp nonviolence, if you grasp violence, any of the other possible emotions, if you grasp them, it's suffering. You know, at least it's stressful. And the stress can lead to major disruptions of the life process, which can lead you now to, again, grasping violence. And grasping fear, being thrown into paralysis of fear, and grasping violence can lead to great cruelty. So all the hardships and sufferings of sickness, old age, and death occur in consciousness, and all the cruelty is perpetrated from consciousness.

[43:06]

And all that suffering is due to not understanding the self process. So feelings. It's its own category for meditation because it's so closely related to self. You may have noticed that none of the five was self. It wasn't on the list. So it's probably somewhere over around feeling or over around a perception. Like people feel that they think. Or it's probably over around thinking. The thinking feels like a self. Or around the thinking there's a sense of this is my thinking and that's your thinking. So it's like something around the thinking, something around the feeling, something around the other emotions or something around the body. Oh, that's my sense.

[44:09]

I saw that. That was my... It's my colors, my eyes, my ear, my body. So it could be over around the body, there could be clinging, sense of self, feelings, and emotions. This is top down. I'm not telling you the story of how the feelings come up with the sense of self. I'm going down from the sense of self is in that space where there's feeling, It's the basic space of consciousness where there's feeling, where there's sense organs, where there's objects, not objects but fields for the sense organs, where there's emotions and where there's perceptions. And this is not said in the description of the five skandhas, five aggregates, but I'm telling you all this stuff actually from the top down, although it doesn't mention

[45:18]

Later Buddhism points out that all these five aggregates are ideas, they're images, and everything in them is images. They are images, but when they're presented it's not necessarily mentioned. The following five categories are five ideas. As a matter of fact, five categories is an idea. And then each one of the categories is an idea. They usually don't mention that, but I'm giving you the advanced course right away. From the top down. Now from the bottom up, which I'm not going to do this week, all these things, all these things that appear in consciousness, they come up from images. They're built from images and they're images from the bottom to the top. and images are body-based. Images are body-based.

[46:21]

Images come from the body and then come in and then form a process of imagination unconscious process of imagination which produces a conscious process of imagination in which there is a conscious process of imagining a self and feeling a self. And a personality. A personality is a consciousness with a self. So I'm suggesting to you that your unconscious processes don't have a personality. However, your unconscious processes are supporting the life of a personality, which is the life of a consciousness where there's somebody there. And the life of a consciousness where there's somebody there is that life, that conscious life, Every moment of living that way transforms the unconscious processes.

[47:28]

The unconscious processes support conscious processes and every moment of conscious processes, as it happens, transforms its support. It isn't enough in consciousness to want to be a kind, fearless person whose compassion is so great that when they meet a scene of cruelty the cruelty melts into compassion. The aspiration in some consciousnesses is that very aspiration to develop a wisdom and a compassion in that space that's so great that if you present it with images of cruelty, it can relate to them in such a way that the cruelty is liberated. And if you see this movie, I'm not telling you how to watch it, but I was trying to see how I could be compassionate, how I could feel compassionate towards seeing humans be so cruel.

[48:41]

And it's easier for most people to be compassionate towards humans, including themselves, who are I think generally easier to be compassionate towards hardship and affliction. But to be compassionate towards insult and cruelty that living beings do to each other, it's more advanced. And to be able to do that is actually supported by being able to do it with afflictions that we, you know. When a child falls down and hurts himself, most people can feel kind towards it. But when a child's cruel to another child, it's harder for people. Not to mention when the child grows up and weighs 250 pounds and is cruel to somebody. Then people have a hard time being compassionate often. But there it is. There can be the aspiration for such a compassion because that compassion could have the function of freeing people from this cruelty and freeing people, freeing personalities

[49:58]

from affliction without changing anything at the moment. I think that's maybe enough input and I thank you for listening and if you have any responses, they're welcome. Yes? Betsy? Yeah. Yeah. So one of the places that this chant, that we chanted on Saturday at No Abode was, starts out by saying, we vow from this life on through our countless lives to hear the true Dharma.

[51:08]

that upon hearing it no doubt will arise in us nor will we lack in faith, that upon meeting the true Dharma we will renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma. Renounce worldly affairs, for example, what worldly affair might one renounce when you hear the true teaching, when you hear the truth. One of the worldly affairs you could renounce, the basic worldly affair to renounce, is you would renounce the misunderstanding of the self. Not understanding yourself is the basic worldly affair, or one of the ways to talk. The basic worldly affair is that you live in a world and you think the world is is out there. That's a worldly affair. When you hear the true Dharma, the teachings that are coming to you, when you hear the true Dharma of it, you can renounce misunderstanding the Self.

[52:17]

And then when you renounce misunderstanding the Self, by that understanding you will be able then to take care of this Dharma. When you first hear it, okay, and then you renounce the things that are causing trouble in life, and then you can maintain this dharma. Okay? That's the beginning. And then it says, it says, although our past evil karma has greatly accumulated, it's almost like it should say, however, our past karma has greatly accumulated, indeed becoming the cause and condition of obstacles in practicing the way. What way? the way of listening to the Dharma, hearing it, and renouncing worldly affairs. That's the way. But we have this kind of accumulation. What does that mean? It means that normally when you're hearing teachings, you're hearing teachings in consciousness.

[53:20]

So you're hearing the teachings about consciousness in consciousness. And one of the teachings about consciousness which you can hear in consciousness is that consciousness is sometimes a big mess. And basically consciousness is giddy. You've heard that before, right? So the place you're hearing the teachings is a realm of awareness where there's a self and there's stress and there's giddiness. So you do want to develop compassion and wisdom, but the place you're developing it, the waters are rough. So you do want to hear it. I just said it. I want to hear the true Dharma. However, the place I'm going to hear it is a turbulent mess. So, you know, it's not going to be that easy to hear the Dharma and then take care of it. Oh, by the way, one more line. You will be able to renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma.

[54:26]

And in doing so, the great earth and all living beings will attain the Buddha way. However, hearing the true Dharma is not that easy because the place to hear it is in Troublesville. The place to hear it is where the mind is like spinning around, constantly challenging us to stay oriented towards what? Compassion. Remembering to be mindful of posture and breathing. Okay, you're mindful of posture and breathing, and then somebody comes over and slaps you in the face, and you have a challenge then to continue to be mindful of posture and breathing. Breathing out, slap. Breathing in, slap. Breathing out, that was a good one. That really hurt. Breathing in, oh yeah, that hurt more. It's hard to keep present with your posture and breathing when you get flipped around by somebody's punch or somebody's insult.

[55:37]

You are a really below average meditator Well, that doesn't bother me. You're way below. Yeah, I know. Anyway, that kind of stuff happens in karmic consciousness and we get disoriented. So then it mentions further in that chant, so if you notice that you just got disoriented from what? From studying, from learning about consciousness, If you get disoriented from learning about the self, learning about feelings, learning about emotions for the sake of becoming free. If you notice that you're disoriented, it says, then you should reveal and disclose that you're disoriented. And reveal and disclose that you're disoriented before those who do not get disoriented. And no matter how disoriented you get,

[56:41]

the Buddhas and bodhisattvas will not get disoriented by your confession. No matter how bad you are, they will serenely welcome your shortcomings and encourage you to try again. And they will tell you that by revealing your disorientation, that this is part of the practice, that all Buddhas have practiced, they all have practiced, they all have been disoriented in their evolution. And then later in that chant it says, therefore the Chang master Luang Ya said, those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. Liberate this body which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were Buddhas they were just like you. You who are not Buddhas, Buddhas were like you before they were Buddhas. And if you do this practice of finding out that you do wish to practice compassion and understanding that practicing compassion is going to be pretty difficult unless you study the place that you're practicing it.

[57:56]

And the place you're practicing it is a turbulent situation. So the place we practice compassion, what we sometimes say, the boat of compassion is not rowed over smooth water. You can row a boat over smooth water, but the boat of compassion is rowed over the rough water of karmic consciousness. And so sometimes you fall out of the boat or you use the paddle to hit somebody. you know, like who's not using their oar properly or whatever. Or somebody tries to take your oar away from you and you say a nasty word. That's where the road, that's what the boat of compassion is like. It's rough. It's normal that it's rough. So then when you you know, when you're not rowing properly, you say, oh, that wasn't a good stroke there.

[59:00]

It's supposed to go in the water, not on somebody's head. I'm sorry. And I'm saying that in the presence of those who will support me to try again. But we have in our background a number of occasions where we responded unkindly to karmic consciousness, right? We have been impatient and ungenerous and uncareful with what's going on in karmic consciousness. Therefore, even now that we wish to be compassionate because of those past actions, it's hard, but not impossible. If you can notice it and confess it and regret it, in the presence of the Buddhas that will melt away the root of this unskillful behavior.

[60:03]

And the root of the unskillful behavior is, of course, not understanding the self. OK? Yes? It changes the support, right. It changes the support. So in consciousness I do want to be kind and then if I forget that and I confess it, although forgetting it isn't very helpful, noticing it and confessing it is. Noticing and confessing it changes the support. Of course, if you wish to be kind and you're kind, that also changes the support. Every time you're kind, that transforms the unconscious processes. And practicing kindness repeatedly creates more and more support for more kindness. But you can't control your consciousness from consciousness. However, you can do good things in consciousness and they do have consequence.

[61:07]

And they have the consequence of supporting more good things and more good things until you finally can see clearly the nature of the situation and become free of it. And then continue to live to express this freedom through understanding. To teach others how to study their consciousness, which is hard. Like people say, like I said, they say, I'm sick of it. I don't want to be in this class where the curriculum is suffering and self-concern or self-concern and suffering. I don't want to study this stuff. Well, it's understandable. A lot of people feel like that. Yeah, I used to feel like that. But now I found out it's really good. The person said, oh, maybe so. Maybe I will study it. think it'll help? Yeah.

[62:10]

Okay. Maybe I'll try it. Even though I don't want to. And part of me doesn't want to. And by the way, when you wish to do something good, it helps you to understand that you probably have at least one contradictory intention. One contradictory intention. At least one. At least one. Yeah. At least one. That's why we make vows, because we know, I wish to be compassionate, but there's other impulses, like, you know, just waiting in line, you know, and then somebody's butting in front of you, you know. And then there's some impulse to not say, oh, please, I hope you get a good place there in front of me. Do you like that place in front of me? That's the way I like to behave.

[63:12]

I wish to behave that way, but there's some other intentions that could pop up. Anything else tonight? I hear the self. That's right. The more you study the self, the less cumbersome it will become. The self can turn from delusion to enlightenment. But you have to study it It actually is turning from delusion to enlightenment all day long, but you have to be there. And it's hard to be there.

[64:14]

Because it's subtle. And I'd like to, in the remaining classes, get into some of the subtleties of studying the self. Anything else? Yes. Someone slighted you, yeah. If I have resentment in myself, what do I do with it? In myself? Or do you want me to talk about it in you? So if I see resentment, generally speaking, I'm pretty sweet to it. Pretty sweet to it. I don't want it to grow, you know. But I, you know, I treat their resentment like I, and I treat me, the person in whom it's happening, I treat like a child.

[65:23]

Because resentful people are children. And children are very easily resentful. Like I have this tiny little granddaughter and she has no trouble being resentful. I mean, almost everyone thinks she's so darling. But she resents quite a bit of things. I don't want it. I don't want it. Like her beloved, her loving grandmother, my spouse, goes to take care of her and she sees her grandmother coming and she says, I don't want you. Because grandmother coming means mama not here. I don't want you. She resents this person who would give her life for her. It's amazing. And this little tiny person, she can actually express if she wants a backpack.

[66:25]

Backpack. This is a neurological wonder that this tiny person can say, I want to, somehow she indicates she wants a backpack. So this grandmother buys her a backpack, which is in the shape of a bunny head. And you can see on, it's now on her, on this little girl's website, there's a picture of her from the back with her new backpack, her little bunny backpack. It's a bunny head, you know, backpack. But when she sees her great patron and loving supporter, grandmother, she says, I don't want you. Of course, the next morning she wakes up and says, I want my grandmother. She calls her Abu. The Chinese word for grandma is Abu. So she sees Abu coming. I don't want Abu. She resents Abu. So, Of course, I want to be generous to this foolish little girl who resents her mother not being there and resents whatever represents mother not being there.

[67:37]

She resents not having the highest possible quality care. Which, you know, her mother is the master, right? They've worked it out. This is like pretty much the same as life. And she wants mother all the time, if possible. And someday she will accept a substitute and not want mother and resent mother. And then mother will be another boat. So you have to just be generous towards the resentment or towards the person who's being resentful like you would to a little boy Just love him even though he's just a silly boy and he's feeling resentful about whatever. Like the granddaughter probably feels it's an insult. It's insulting that this person's coming to take care of me. If people really appreciated me, they would just give me mother after mother. And a grandfather or uncle is an insult.

[68:40]

And I resent it. But You could be compassionate to that little boy, couldn't you? Well, I can too. When this little boy is resentful, I'm compassionate to him. I see a silly little boy, silly little boy, oh, I love you, sweetheart. You're such a silly little boy. And then it's gone, pretty much, for the moment. Buddha does not hate resentful people. Buddha gives them compassion so that they can study themselves. No matter how unskillful they are, Buddha gives them compassion so they'll wake up, so they'll feel supported to study their resentment or whatever it is.

[69:43]

Yeah? Yes? What does it mean? Well, if you want to, you can just go right to work on the self. If you're ready, if you're all set, if the compassion has worked, you're ready to go back to work. Well, yeah, then you say, hey, now that some compassion has come in for me, I think I can actually admit that I was resentful and I'm sorry. It isn't just, it isn't so, but the compassion sometimes might make you, you could go directly from feeling resentment to practicing confession and repentance.

[70:48]

Confession and repentance is a compassion practice. If you're ready, go right to that. But if you're not, be kind to yourself and then go to it. Okay, okay, silly little boy, I love you. Okay, do you want to say anything? Yeah, I was resentful and I'm sorry. But that's still not really studying it. It's laying the groundwork of study now that you have confessed it and said, I'm sorry. Now you go back to work. What's the work? The work was the study you got distracted from. You know, like you were meditating on your posture. You're walking down the street meditating on your posture. And you're breathing. And then a relative says something to you like, you've gained quite a bit of weight, haven't you? Or whatever. That's really an ugly dress. something like that. And then you get distracted from your work of meditating on your posture and breathing. And then you confess and repent and you go back to work. Now you're meditating on your posture and breathing, okay?

[71:51]

You're back at work. And now that you're back at work, you're doing that work, now you can say, well, you know, what's the self? So if you've drawn yourself in meditation on your posture and breathing, then what's the self? whose body is this, whose breath is this, and so on. The study is to study the self. But again, we're studying the self in this turbulent area where something comes up and we have an emotional reaction to it, and then we forget the study. and then we address this emotional thing so we can be present again, calm down, and go back to the study. Does that make sense? Is that real clear? If not, ask it again and again and it'll get clear. This can get clear. Even though it's clear, still you can get disoriented, but at least you understand, I'm disoriented from what?

[72:57]

Oh yeah, right. What's the study again? Oh, yeah. You need a, yeah. So, I would be happy to be your nomenclator.

[73:10]

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