I wanted to mention something. It's kind of a... It made me slightly dig it in a sound bite. Sometimes the meditation practice in the tradition of the Buddha is having two main branches. One branch is a branch of developing tranquility, stabilization of the body and mind. It's sometimes called a mental stabilization, but it refers to physical and mental stabilization. It's one type of practice, which in Sanskrit is called shamatha. And the other branch is called insight or wisdom, vipassana. And I was just going to say, Vipassana is sort of like, it literally means higher vision, I think.

[01:15]

So you might think, well, higher vision is maybe mental, but actually vision is a physical phenomenon too. So actually even wisdom is not just mental. It's actually the body, such a thing as a wise body. So I don't know, I think both the stabilization and the insight, or the concentration practices and insight practices are both body-mind events. And so the samba is that the fruit of giving up discursive thought is tranquility. And the fruit of using discursive thought skillfully is insight. Concentration to give up discursive thought and to develop

[02:28]

we use discursive thought. At this retreat we're mostly emphasizing ways of using discursive thought, sharing instructions that you apply to your thinking so that you can think about the way you think in such a way as to become liberated from the way you think. He said something like, I think words and phrases are discriminating consciousness. Or I think he could even say words and phrases are dualistic consciousness. And words and phrases liberate consciousness. discriminating dualistic consciousness.

[03:31]

So from dualistic consciousness we have karmic consciousness, and karmic consciousness is based on these words, but we can use discursive presentation to develop insight into karmic consciousness and be liberated from it. The type of meditation that We've been doing again this week not so much the comedy type, but more the insight type. I've been talking to you about how to examine phenomena. I've been talking to you in discursive language about how to direct your attention towards phenomena. By listening to these teachings, using these teachings to see the way phenomena really exist. This type of work is not always common, especially at the beginning. In the end it is common, but at the beginning it's not so much common.

[04:40]

As you start to hear these teachings and try to apply them, if you feel agitated, it might be good to take a break and do the calming type of practices, where you just let go of discursive thought for a while. until you feel stabilized, energetic, kind of unified. And then, if you want to, you can go back to the insight practices. But I haven't been emphasizing yet, but I want to say that for most people it's between the two. If you're already kind of like just very easily and naturally very stabilized, you don't have to do much stabilization practice. But if you start to feel agitated and tired and things like that about this insight, just take a break from all these teachings and thinking about them, and just let go of your thinking process for a while.

[05:48]

What does this sound like? Understanding wrong view as wrong view. What does that sound like? Time's up? Did you want to say something? When you understand that other beings depend on you. You understand? What I said was, understanding wrong view as wrong view and understanding right view as right view, what is that? Yes, both. It's right view. That's right view. It is understanding wrong view as wrong view and right view as right view. And right view is also insight work. What's right view?

[06:56]

And what's an example? What's this? There is no fruit or result of good and bad. What's that? Hmm? She said emptiness. Any other comments? Here's what I said. There is no fruit or result of good and bad action. And one person said wisdom. Another person said liberation. Wrong view. It's wrong view. That's wrong view, to say there is no fruit or result of good and bad action.

[08:08]

That's wrong view. There's other aspects of wrong view too, like there's no this world or other worlds, there's no mother, no father, no beings who are born spontaneously, no good and virtuous recluses, who have realized for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other worlds. That's wrong here to say that there's many of that stuff. Is that hard to follow? It was? Double negative? There is no result of good and bad actions. There is fruit and result of good and bad actions.

[09:09]

What does that sound like? It's the right view. That's right view. Fruit and result of good and bad action. That's right view. There are beings who have realized for themselves direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world, the world beyond this world. This is right view. What type of right view is this that I just told you about? Huh? It's mundane right view. It's right view, which is good. Right view is good. Well, it doesn't quite say that yet, but I told you that that's implied here, is that there's the idea that the individual... And so this right view is affected by taints.

[10:25]

It partakes of merit. and there is ripening on the side of attachment. So in this right view there's taints and it partakes of merit. It wouldn't necessarily be that you're trying to gain something, but usually, I guess it's implied that if there's a taint, there's probably some involvement in gain and loss. You might not be trying to gain anything, but you're still caught in gain and loss. That's part of what these taints are about. Another taint is self and other being separate. Gain and loss being separate.

[11:28]

Yeah. So this is right view, though, and it is meritorious. However, even with this right view, you can still be involved sometimes in unwholesome behavior. But you understand that the fruit of that unwholesome behavior will come back to whoever is the author. And at this level, you're probably still thinking that you... At this level, there's still some... gain and loss issues. So that's why there's taint. The word taint could also be translated as outflows. Outflows happen when you think in terms of gain and loss. Or existence and non-existence. So in the mundane level of right view. You correct its right view, but you're still involved in gaining loss, existence and non-existence.

[12:37]

So there's outflows. When we do our service in the morning, we dedicate all that merit to Buddha and ancestors and so on. Do you rather that we don't gain merit from it? Or give it away? Oh, give it away, yeah. Yes. Well, if they don't let me know. Me? You didn't notice the people, the Koreans inside are doing that? No. Do they chant in Korean? Oh, yeah. I think with that stuff they're chanting in Korean is that they're dedicating the merit.

[13:41]

All Mahayana Buddhists give away their merit as soon as possible, as you may have noticed. And so what does this sound like? The wisdom, the faculty of wisdom, the power of wisdom, the investigation of states, the enlightenment factor, the path factor of right view, whose mind is noble, whose mind is taintless, who possesses the noble path and has developed the noble path. What does this sound like? That's super mundane right view. Now, we saw what wrong view was.

[14:44]

Okay, so right view is to understand wrong view as wrong view, and right view as right view. And then it says that under the mundane right view there's understanding that there is fruit and results, fruits or result of good and bad action. But under the super mundane it didn't mention that you're seeing that there's results or fruits of the action. It just mentions that it's taintless, and that's wisdom. Now comes the issue of intention, or right intention.

[15:46]

And it says at the beginning of this sentence, intention, by the way, is the definition of what? the definition of karma. Karma is basically defined by intention. Intention is like the direction of a state of consciousness. Again, if there's some activity of your body, but that activity is not based in some mental intention, it's not carnal. Pardon? If there's some activity of your body, or your voice,

[16:51]

But that's not emanating from some mental intention. It's not coming. Like I gave the example, did you miss any of the Dharma talks? Not that I'm aware of. Remember the example of the doctor hitting the knee So that's an activity. Elevation is an important activity. Digestion is an important activity. Involuntary, literally, involuntary means intentional. So a lot of our activity, as a matter of fact, a lot of the activity that a person who is brain dead can still do, are involuntary things, right?

[17:56]

Like they twitch or something, think that they think, oh, I'm going to do this twitch. So we say they're brain dead. They're not brain dead, actually. a certain part of the brain, but what part of the brain is dead? And we say they're dead, brain dead. The voluntary, the part that thinks, I do this and I do that. In other words, other parts of the brain are operating, otherwise the heart would stop, etc. A lot of people that are called brain dead, and most of the brain still functions very nicely, sometimes better than usual. like the person maybe not worrying down there anymore. Their ulcers go away. Who knows? Anyway, a lot of activity of your life is not karma because it's intentional.

[19:01]

It doesn't have, it isn't in your mind an intention to do these things. They happen. That's why I said over and over that when the guy says, hey you, and the head turns, that's like a reflex. You can also voluntarily turn your head. The head can also turn just like a reflex. And it's not really karma then. Yes? A lot of hand movements, yeah. Yeah, right. Those are not really karma. They're activities, though. Sometimes when people are dancing, their activity, they're dancing very beautifully, and their activity is like not karma. Sometimes it is, but in order for it to be karma, in a sense, it has to be that you're... I once did this experiment.

[20:05]

It was not really an experiment. It was an experiment, but it was also an exercise. And the exercise was to compose a poem with somebody else. And I think that the... So one person would say a word and the other person would say a word. So you can see you're not exactly in control of the poem, right? But still, For someone like me, who's not a very well-trained poet, even when the other person says a word and then you say a word, even though you know you're not in control of the poem, you still might think about what the next word would be. Try to choose a good one, a smart one, a helpful one, whatever. And then you're doing it, right? So then it isn't very poetic.

[21:10]

The word poetry has to do with making. Poetis means to make or create. So poetry has to do with creativity. But oftentimes when we put ourself into the creative process, it gets bottled up. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what happened, but I was working with this woman, and she said a word, and I said a word, and it wasn't going very well. One of the teachers of the class said, start dancing. So we started dancing, And then there was less thinking about the words we said. And I don't remember what happened, but I could tell it was turning into better and better poetry. But then I picked her up in the air, held her over my head, and turned and spun around. And we kept doing it. And then the poetry was just unbelievably beautiful.

[22:15]

No one knows what was said, but it was just amazing. Because, of course, holding her in the air and spinning her, I wasn't thinking about what I was going to say. And neither were she. But we kept talking. I would say our words were involuntary. Now, my spinning her wasn't involuntary, which I think tried not to drop her and so on, and she maybe had some thoughts too. But the speaking was involuntary, and the speaking was poetic, and that's why some of these unthinking hand movements that I was telling you I saw myself make while I was talking, very poetic movements, thinking about them. There was no intention to move my hand, really. I had no gaining idea about moving my hands, and it was lovely. Yes? You mentioned that the poetry initially wasn't very good.

[23:17]

Right. That you're not a well-trained poet. What does that mean, a well-trained poet? In other words, by factors, by comic ethics? Yeah, you might... Well, just like... Yeah, by training, you may be able gradually to get so that you can write like you drive a car, without thinking. And you don't get in there like thinking about whether it's good or not. It just comes right out of there. After it's done, you might think, well, now I'll look to see what I wrote. You might say various things. That's what we're saying. That's what we just said. You can teach people technique, and they'll be a little self-conscious about it, but there are certain people who just change, and they can still have this thing about what you're suggesting, just counterfeiting it.

[24:24]

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But anyway, now back to intention. It says, we're talking about intention now, and it says, therein... By the way, this is supposedly Buddha talking, right? Therein, monks, right view comes first. Wherein? In right intention. Right view comes first. You already have right view, supposedly. And how does right view come first? One understands wrong intention as wrong intention, and right intention as right intention. This is right view. So right view also applies to intention. In other words, you can tell wrong intention is wrong intention, and right intention is right intention.

[25:26]

And then the Buddha says, and what month is wrong intention? Maybe I should have read what wrong intention was first and asked you what that meant. That would have been easier. But anyway, so you answer, what's wrong intention? No, that's wrong view. Wrong intention. What's wrong intention? Pardon? No. Karmic consciousness could be right intention, which you will soon see. What's wrong intention? Karmic consciousness could also be wrong intention. Actually, the purpose of... Pardon? Actually, intention...

[26:30]

Well, if Ricky was out until that, we would all, if he was married, we'd stay out until the postman. You know, I would tell him. Okay, that's... That, well... I heard that. Here's what the Buddha says. The intention of sensual desire. That's sort of like what you said. The intention of ill will and the intention of cruelty.

[27:24]

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