If you remember, the story from last time was about Yao Shan sitting in meditation and his teacher, Shirtou, coming up and saying something like, what are you doing? And he says, I'm not doing anything at all. So what is this sitting that he's doing? Sitting. I could say which is. Anything at all. Now there are kinds of sitting where you do do something.

[01:05]

Some of you may be familiar with these types of sitting. And in the Buddhist path, there are some types of meditation which are, strictly speaking, under the heading of Buddhist practice. Informally, not strictly speaking, considered Buddhist practice, but are really doing something. And... Sometimes Buddhism is presented systematically as five paths. The first path is called the path of equipment. The second path is the path of concerted effort or intensive effort. The third path is the path of vision. The fourth path is the path of sometimes called cultivation or meditation. But it's actually the path of bringing the vision into being. And the fifth path is a path of school's out.

[02:13]

Huh? Not doing. No. Yeah, not doing. No, it started before that. Huh? Good guess, though. No, it's the practice. It's the school's out. It's called school out. School's out. No more training. So at that point, yeah, at that point, Your substance has completely penetrated your tissue, your tissue suchness, neurological, genetic suchness. Definitely. In the first two paths of equipment and considered effort, you still are operating under the belief in the substantiality of the self, of the body. So you're doing meditation practices under the auspices of this delusion, but the meditation practices are getting you ready for a reversal of your opinion, which is the path of vision.

[03:26]

The path of vision you you start practicing not doing anything at all. However, you may still have lots of habits which were built up under the auspices of your belief in your independent existence. So even after your vision is cleared, you need to expose your habitual body, and your habitual body means your body from your own. From your ancestors, excuse me. Having a human body is, you've got a big habit here. You've got competition in your cells. You've got me first in your fingernails practically. So, you take this habitual body and you juxtapose it with this new vision of the illusion of self as insubstantial, and then you gradually bring this vision into this body.

[04:31]

This is called path of cultivation. All these five paths are paths of meditation. The first two are dualistic, self-centered meditation. The last three are enlightened, actually, Buddhist meditation. In the third one, you clear up your vision. In the fourth one, you bring that vision into being. Bring into being. Bring into bhava. Come to bhava. And then the fifth path is the path of graduation. Just enjoy yourself. And no more training. No more learning. So I'd like to talk about how do you get to... I guess in some sense I'd like to talk about how do you get to the place where you're practicing, which is sitting, which is not doing it at all.

[05:42]

So the basic thing is... The basic practice is you ride the thief's horse to catch the thief. It's a Zen expression. You ride the thief's horse to catch the thief. The thief's horse is karma. The self-delusions horse is karma. Self-delusions horse is self-delusions activity. That's karma. So the training is to get on that horse that self-delusion uses. And you get on that horse, and you get intimate with that horse, and you become free of the thief.

[07:00]

The thief is not so intimate with this horse. This thief is like somebody who has a horse who doesn't like horses very much. You get intimate with this horse. And when you are intimate with the horse, you meet this self-delusion and self-delusion drops off. And then there's no more horse or thief. This is also actually sometimes spoken of as a bull. In Zen you have these ten ox-herding pictures, so they could be understood as learning how to ride your karma. Anyway, the main thing is the training is to become intimate with this big, gross thing called karma.

[08:05]

Of course, it can be subtle, like has subtle movements. That's a big thing. And Anna was telling me that she says, I think this talk about karma is getting rather substantial. It's turning into like good and bad karma. You know, it's getting really substantial. Yeah, I said, that's good. So today I said, you should have a substantial sense of this karma. This karma is, you know, ultimately not substantial, but the point is we, this deluded self, thinks karma is substantial, wants karma to be substantial. And if you're going to get intimate with this thing, the fact that it's substantial will come in handy. Because it's not all, you know, fluffy and elusive. It actually, it's heavy-duty, gross action we're talking about here. So if it's substantial, good. Actually, I said also to Anna, I said, you know, for a lot of us, our karma is in the closet.

[09:07]

It's like, you know, karma, me? What are you talking about? Maybe. Getting a substantial sense of it is good. Easier to be intimate with. Like they say in that story, you know, Oh, Grandma, what big eyes you have, better to see you with. Oh, Grandma, what big teeth you have, better to eat you with. So yeah, your karma is substantial. It's easier for you to get intimate with it. And again, when there's intimacy with the karma, Then you say, well, where's this self that's supposed to be doing this? There's supposed to be like a self that does this stuff, right? That's what karma is. Self, independent self, has the power to do this.

[10:08]

So when you're intimate with the karma, now where's this self? Before you're intimate with karma, it seems like, yeah, there's a powerful self doing this, but that's when they're not intimate. When they get intimate, You see if you can find a self when you're really intimate with your activity. When you're really intimate with your activity, it's not your activity anymore. It's just activity. It's just activity as such. That's the kind of activity... Yashan does when he sits. There's activity which is just such. Nobody can do suchness. Activity which is suchness. Nobody can do it. Nobody can know it. So when Sri Toh says, well, you say you're not doing anything at all. What is it that you're not doing? Even the 10,000 sages don't know this intimacy.

[11:10]

In intimacy, nobody knows this intimacy. Nobody knows this intimacy. If you know, it's not really intimate. And if you understand how it is that you can't know this intimacy, that's called Buddha's knowledge. Buddha's knowledge is to understand that you can't know this, but you can realize it. can realize it by writing your karma. I'm not doing anything at all. You say you're not doing anything at all. What is it that you're not doing? Even the ten thousand sages don't know. I am now thus.

[12:17]

You are now thus too, teacher. You transmitted this to me, this suchness to me. I took care of it. That's how I'm practicing, and now I'm transmitting it back to you. And so then the teacher's very happy. Shuto is very happy and composes a poem. We've been living together for a very long time, but I didn't even know his name. Just traveling along together, according with conditions, Even the 10,000 sages don't know him. How much less so hasty people. And part of what happens here is that in the process of getting intimate with your karma,

[13:34]

you will notice that sometimes you're not intimate with your karma. So I asked you to check it out, and maybe some of you noticed that you weren't continuously aware of your karmic horse since we last talked. Maybe there were some moments there when you lost track of this horse. I don't know, nobody actually told me that they did, but... This horse has been going probably nonstop since our last class. Have you been with it the whole time? Have you been with it sometimes? I gave a talk at Gringoldsch a while ago about, you know, that phrase, to err is human. A white spider crawling up my sleeve.

[14:45]

Now spiders, haven't I met you before somewhere? Who are you? It has two pronunciations. First pronunciation is... Err. Second pronunciation is... Err. There's another word called... Err. [...] Air aura, and er, or air.

[15:47]

Now, around Zen Center, this air, this air is amazing. Coming up from the behind. Trying to turn over and become first pronunciation. But the thing in the dictionary is you haven't won yet. Hi. Er. To er is human. The word er comes from the Middle English uran, e-r-r-e-n, uran, which means to wander about. To wander about. To wander about is human. So we do all kinds of, we humans imagine that we do all kinds of independent power trips. We imagine that. I do this, I do that. I think this, I think that. I say this, I say that.

[16:49]

But we wander. Wander means, means er. Er means you deviate. You go away from what is true. It is normal for humans to go away from what is happening, to veer away and wander away from what's going on. That's how we can commit karma. Now, it's going to be hard to get in touch with this constant erring. Okay? So at the end of my talk where I spent the whole talk talking about how people all different constantly giving example example of how people veer away, veer away, veer away from what's happened all the time, veering away, going away from what's actually going on.

[17:56]

That's really human. At the end I said, please excuse me for rubbing it in. Sorry. I haven't rubbed it in today. You notice? is touched upon a little bit. Anyway, that night, Linda Ruth Cutts went to a Chinese restaurant and got a fortune. You know, in his fortunes, Confucius says, Confucius says, to err is human. To rub it in is divine. To rub it in is divine. With an exclamation mark at the end of divine. To rub it in means to get on the horse of doing. Rub it in. Stay in touch with somebody is around here who thinks she's doing something. All day long she probably does.

[18:58]

Somebody is busy doing, doing, doing. Rub it in. Rub yourself into that. Catch up with yourself. Get on that thief's horse. That deluded person's operating all day long, riding along. You want to catch that thief and become free of that thief of self-cleaning, you've got to get on self-cleaning's horse. Self-cleaning is right there on that horse. If you get intimate with it, you'll find out something about self-cleaning. When you become intimate with the horse, intimate with the karma, intimate with self-clinging, then when you sit, you will be just like the ancestors, you will be doing nothing at all. And not only will you be doing nothing at all, but you'll realize that you don't have to do anything. That you can live without being a powerful self. As a matter of fact, you can live happily ever after without being on any more power trips of where you do stuff.

[20:10]

You don't have to do anything ever again. That's just a delusion. But once we realize that, we feel so grateful that we feel like, well, we've got to do something to celebrate the fact that we don't have to do anything. Yes. So let's have a ceremony. Let's go up and sit in the zendo and celebrate the fact that we don't have to do anything anymore, ever. But we do have to say thank you. Real. So let's do a ceremony to say thank you. And then other people who don't realize this yet can see us doing the ceremony. They can say, what are you sitting there for? You can say, I'm sitting here to make a Buddha. But to make a Buddha means by sitting here, I make a Buddha. By sitting here and not doing anything at all, I make a Buddha. I bring into being the fact that we don't have to do anything to be Buddha.

[21:13]

Matter of fact, as soon as we think we have to do something to be Buddha, we've heard. We've heard a way of suchness. The ancestor, when the ancestor sits, he's not doing anything at all. When you sit that way, you're the ancestor. If you're still doing something, you're not the ancestor. But if you get on that horse and become intimate with that horse, then you're not doing anything. Intimacy with that karma, that's not karma. That's not doing anything at all. Between now and the time of realizing intimacy with that karma, you're training yourself in the ancestral way. You haven't realized it yet until you're really intimate with that karma. While you're sitting, while you're walking, while you're doing whatever.

[22:15]

But you can hopefully be joyful that you're doing the same practice that all the ancestors did as they closed the gap. between their awareness and their karma, their attention and their karma. They studied their karma. They studied their karma until they were intimate with it. Intimate with it, you're free of it. And free of the self which generates it. And when you are not intimate with it, just say, OK, that's an error. Confess it. Come back. Where is that karma again? That's the work. The work is not to make yourself into somebody else. The work is to be intimate with the person who thinks she needs to be somebody else. And one of the easiest, grossest ways to find her is to find her activity, her karma.

[23:20]

Rub it in. Rub it in. Rub that karma in. Rub yourself into your karma. This will save all sentient beings. And then after you become intimate, then you enter into the last three phases of the practice, where you train yourself not in intimacy anymore so much, but when you bring intimacy in confrontation with habits Habits of perception, habits of emotion, until your actual way of being gets actually transformed in accord with your intimacy. So I showed you the story before, but some of you haven't seen it. So I'll do it again. It's a story about riding Indian ponies.

[24:29]

How many people have heard that story? It's a good story. Can I tell it to you? So this guy who wrote this nice book, it's called In Reverence for All Life. I think his name is something Boone. Not Daniel. It's not Richard. Wasn't Richard Boone on the TV star? Something other Boone. Anyway, he was first converted by a German shepherd. He met a German shepherd who was a little bit too enlightened to miss. He was also a movie star, this German shepherd. Anyway, the German shepherd kind of snapped this guy out of his sleep. And then he started to see all the teaching coming from animals. And he also was interested in Native Americans and hung out with, I believe, Navajo and Hopi peoples.

[25:34]

And one of the things he loved the most was about the way the Native American men, I guess, rode their ponies bareback. They were so skillful at riding these little ponies around without any, you know, equipment other than their legs and hands. And he asked the chief of the group, who was also a very good rider, said, how did they learn, how could I learn to ride these ponies bareback? And he was sitting with the chief. They were sitting watching, I think, watching these riders. The chief didn't answer for about, he said, maybe two hours didn't answer. And then finally, after about two hours, the chief said, good question. You might think, well, I could have done that too if I had two hours living on the desert.

[26:46]

Easy to wait two hours to answer the question. That wasn't that cool. Anyway, then about a year later, the chief said to him, I want to talk to you about your favorite topic. And the guy said, you mean riding Indian ponies? And he said, yeah. Well, first of all, you'll never be able to do it. You have to be born an Indian. to ride these ponies. There's certain things you cannot do. You have to be born with these horses. You have to grow up with them. You have to play with them. Play with horses instead of TVs. It's like you can't really, if you're American, you really can't play in the National Hockey League unless you grow up in northern Minnesota.

[27:48]

Everybody else is from Canada. You can't really be a professional hockey player unless you grow up where it's freezing cold. Because when it's freezing cold, you can start skating in July. You know, and you skate from July to July. So you skate all year. So you have to grow up with these ponies. You have to play with them when you're a little kid. You have to walk through their shit. And you have to... You have to grow up with them. And after many years of living with them, you can be intimate enough with these horses so that you and the horse can do things which defy dualistic understanding. Because of the intimacy of your relationship makes this wonderful thing as possible. He said, but I can say a little bit about it, even though you'll never be able to do it.

[28:49]

So then achieve one like this. That's what you can do with your karma. You did grow up with your karma, though. You've been walking through it all this time. You can learn to rise your karma fair back. Because you grew up with it. Indian ponies? No. Karma, yes. You know something about your karma. You grew up with it. Meet it. Become intimate with it. And then, from that intimacy, The possibility of activity, which is born in intimacy, arises.

[29:51]

And then you can do anything. Not you. Anything can happen. Wonderful things can happen. Intimacy drops off this personal powerhouse and realizes the fourth ancestors, one practice, Samadhi. Okay? So this is practice. And You can do it all day long, unless there's some time when there's no activity, no karma. Then you can't do it, but that's okay, because you're free at that time anyway. But when there's karma, Nip, nip, nip, study, study, study, study. Study that kind of mind. [...]

[30:56]

Study that kind of mind. Study that kind of mind. Who did that? [...] Yeah, I think that's probably the line. But I think that the line ends by, the line drives to cause certain things off and certain wars. I think that's what that is. Ventures. Well, my simplistic answer, which happens to be the one I think, is if you become intimate with what you can be aware of now, that opens doors to what you have not yet allowed yourself to see.

[32:14]

If you become able to allow yourself to devote your attention, to paying attention to your cognitive activity, In other words, whatever karma you're doing, you're doing. And that happens according to the rules of half karma. You have certain habits that you have to live with. That stuff's going on by whatever patterns have been established. I'm not talking about interrupting those patterns at this point. We talk about, you know, I'm more talking about how to get to this practice of not doing anything, okay? So whatever karma is happening, if you can allow yourself, right while you're putting energy, right while your life is using energy to do karma, because if you can somehow find that there's some ability to devote attention to this process, you become a different person.

[33:17]

you become a disciple of Buddha by devoting your energy. It turns out, folks, that karmic activity is not utilizing all your resources. It's not your wholeness that does karma. It's not your wholeness that's a personal power. That's part of it. And that's going on. There's a lot more available in terms of awareness and love which still can be used to pay attention to this process. If you choose to use that life energy, that awareness, to study this small karmic part of yourself, you're immediately transformed. You now become a student of Buddha. This transformed person if she actually continues for a while to let these energies be devoted to awareness of this small, selfish person, she realizes that actually it's a good move.

[34:26]

And actually she didn't need to have that extra energy like, you know, not engaged, watching out for the small one, making sure that nobody hurts her a little bit. And then so she feels like, hey, I can even put more energy into study. And more energy into study. And then actually put more energy into study, it's even going better. I feel even happier, freer, now that I'm studying even more. I'm seeing some obnoxious things, but I'm in the good about the study. The more and more you study, the more and more you give yourself to the awareness of what you're doing, the better you feel. And the more you give yourself, the more you drop these hiding, these doors start to open because you realize you don't need them shut. You feel more comfortable. And then when you open them, you get more energy for study. And you say, well, let me open some more on purpose just because I think I have nothing more energy for study. You open them, you get more, you get more clear, you get more concentrated. fresher, more enthusiastic, bubbling over for the studying of what's still maybe this small-scale trip point.

[35:33]

But gradually the practice gets so big that even though this thing's still going on, it's not such a big problem. And then finally, of course, I'm saying that when you really get your whole life coordinated and joined like that, then this big change happens is that you start to lose, you lose the belief that it's the source of the conic life in the first place. Now, there's still maybe some stuff hidden away in your tissue. But then you just keep training this tissue. You start noticing, oh, that's, you know, I see that they spit my face and I thought that felt too bad. And your body is still like reacting in ways that were set up while we were doing all that was self-respect. But now the body starts to transform. So not only is your vision change, but your body drags it to you.

[36:36]

And then even more secrets start coming out of your tissue. and getting exposed to selflessness, the process, turning to light. And that phase of practice takes a long time, actually. Some people have real insight, but it takes a long time for them to actually train their body, physicality. But again, you should understand that it would take a long time. Things like this, if you don't worry about it, if you're still packing away, don't record the understanding. Habits like this set up under a different understanding. So... Karma is any kind of interventional flow Yeah. I understand that very well.

[37:36]

Connected with... No, it is intentional involution. Connected with the belief in self. You have to have that too. Because I think it is possible for an awakened person to have a volition, an intention, a wish... but they don't identify with it. Therefore, it's not karma. It's just activity, pure selfless activity. So selfless activity is not karma. But when there's a self-concern here, you connect that with the volition, then you've got karma. And the results of the karma come back to the all-powerful actor, or at least powerful enough to lift my arm, whatever it is. Well, I was kind of waiting a little bit to go deeper.

[38:48]

And I can tell you about my plan. I don't know which way to go best. But this same teacher, Yaoshant, okay, I told you. He was sitting in Zaza, he was sitting in meditation. His teacher asked him, what are you doing? He says, I'm not doing anything at all. Later, Yao Shang was sitting in meditation, one of the monk came up to him, maybe one of his students, and said, what are you thinking? Sitting still like that, sitting so immovably, what kind of thinking is going on there? And then he said, thinking of not thinking. So I wasn't sure at what point I should go in now to thinking. which is the same thing. In other words, he's saying, what are you doing? He said, not doing anything at all. He said, what are you thinking? He said, I am not thinking anything at all. I'm non-thinking. So I don't know if you're ready for that, but that addresses thinking.

[39:50]

But your question isn't about that. Your question is about how is that karma, right? So there's three kinds of karma, thought, Speak and by posture. Thought is the origin and definition of karma. Thought actually is not the right word. Better to say thinking. Thinking is the definition of karma. And Chinese character for this is a rice field, a rice patty, rice patty over the character for mind or heart. It's kept it for thinking. And in Sanskrit it's chetana. So, yes, the Buddha said... Actually, Linda's got a little handout for you, right? Yeah, it's done.

[40:53]

I have a little handout on some of the basic principles of karma. The basic definition the Buddha gave for karma was karma is... Volition. Karma is chitana. So you're saying, how is that karma? That is the basis of karma, is that shape. And then you're saying, well, how, if you just think of something, how is that karma? And how does that lead to results which come back to you? Well, one way is, it tends to lead to further thoughts like that. As long as a particular shape is in your mind and it leads to other shapes like that in your mind, you're always then potentially ready to speak and physically enact that shape. So that's one way it's karma. So when you think a certain way, one of the things that happens is that other thoughts like that will be conditioned by that and will depend on that.

[41:58]

It doesn't mean for sure that this thought will lead to another thought like that. But there is a tendency for a thought of this type to condition another thought of this type. So thinking a certain way does tend to condition and set the possibility for thinking that way again. Now, also when you think a certain way and then you act upon it, physically or verbally, then there's additional reinforcement in the mind to think that way again. So speech, that thought, thinking is the origin of speech and physical postures. So in that sense, it's the root of karma, it's the source of karma, but all by itself, it also has karmic consequences. Namely, when you think certain ways, you feel bad. You feel that.

[43:02]

So you think certain ways and sometime later you will feel that. You think other ways, sometime later you will feel good. But when I exhaust this field, in this case, the karmic effect, I think it's gone, right? Yes. Well, one of the other rules of karmic is that karmic acts have consequences three times. So when you feel a bad feeling connected to a certain way of thinking you had before, you have just at least partially fulfilled the destiny of that action. So there may be other ones coming later. And part of the rule is that if part of the trajectory... For example, you may think something bad about me right now or feel bad about it quite soon. Maybe.

[44:02]

Like the next minute, you might say, oh, I don't like to think of him that way. It feels bad. Or it feels bad. That's why I don't like to think of him that way. I'm going to stop thinking that way because it feels bad. But then, unbeknownst to you, two other trajectories have been set up, which will come much later. And as they mature, as they fly through psychic time and space, they get more powerful. So you can think... You can think some negative way about somebody and wish them some bad thing and feel bad about that. But it's also possible that some really bad consequences are going to come much later as a result of that. That's why it's recommended that you start practicing as soon as possible because to get ready to handle that stuff and also... the maturing of bad things, because then they won't be so bad, but not foreshorten the maturing of good things. Because if they mature longer, they'll be better.

[45:03]

Turns out that you can't change the dials like that, like just practice real hard and bring the results of the bad sooner and let the good ones go to full maturity. It doesn't work that way. If you practice, you bring both of them to quicker maturity. You say, I might do bad. I wish the good ones would like. But the good ones maturing earlier are OK, because even good maturing karma is still somewhat, you know, a source of attachment. So it's better to mature even the good stuff in terms of liberation. I was listening to this radio show called Money Talk, and this guy calls up, and he's asking this guy for some advice on investments. And he says, I got a tremendous amount of money invested in such and such a way, and I'm getting such and such dividends.

[46:10]

He said, well, how much money do you have? He said, $4.5 million. He said, so the guy at the show said, well, then you're getting about $80,000 a year in dividends, right? He said, yeah, $85. So then he said, what should I do with the investments? He said, you're 57 years old. You have $4 million. Spend your dividends. Spend them. Spend them. That's what they're for. He said, but I've been operating on a policy that I should reinvest. The guy in the show said, give me a break. You got $4 million, you're 57. When are you going to use this money? What's it for? Spend it. Okay. So we've done some good karma and if we let it sit there, it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. When are you going to spend it? How do you spend good karma?

[47:12]

You spend it by being happy. Be happy. Practice Buddhism. Use it to practice now. Cash it in on practice. Now, of course, your weight is going to be even better. But the thing is, one of those bad things might mature and you might blow your whole practice and never get to collect it. So cash in on all your good karma, and you cash in on good karma by practicing. When you practice, that's how you cash in on it. Your ability to practice is cashing in on your good karma. And then your bad karma will get foreshortened, and all the rest of your good karma will get foreshortened. Good karma foreshortened means you practice more. Bad karma foreshortened means it's not so bad. And also because it got foreshortened, it got foreshortened because you're practicing, so you have a chance to experience it without, you know, fighting back and saying, I hate the law of karma. That was just a joke. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean that, Reb.

[48:13]

Okay, Ramon, you have one more question? Yes, it does. If you think you can deal with it, like, let's say you think I can deal with that soon or later, then in the world where you think you can deal with it sooner, deal with it sooner, basically. Also with a good family. Also with a good family, yeah. We deal with both of them as soon as possible, you know, in a wholesome, reasonable way. Now sometimes you don't arrange to deal with it soon, but it's a gift to you. But I would say, sometimes the gift comes in the form of you thinking that you're asking for it soon. Sometimes the gift, because the person brings it to you soon. So like that example yesterday, if you're practicing sincerely and people sense that and you don't deal with them well, they tend to come and tell you that soon rather than wait for many years and hold that.

[49:30]

Remember all those years when you said that thing and they wait all those years before they tell you. No, they tell you like, What are you talking like that to me for? I don't like you talking this way. Maybe not even waiting until the next day. Just say, please don't talk to me like that. Unless you got right back. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry. Not that bad. And that's the way people treat you when you're practicing. But if they think you're not practicing, they say, well, he's treating me badly, so I'm not going to tell him because he doesn't care. I'm going to wait until later. Until a better opportunity to tell him. They have various interesting stories about that. Like Godfather 1, 2, and 3. They wait. They wait till the perfect moment to tell the person how you felt about what they did back then. This is not about loving people. This is about revenge. Yes?

[50:32]

I don't know who's next. Did he? Oh, no, I think you had your hand up way early in the tour section. But it's so hard to say, excuse me for backtracking, but... Well, it's kind of like the pack up here. You practice packing, you know. Get your zappo, get your Oreo key. Get your zappo and your Oreo key. Get your seat. Just get your rock. get your robes, get your teacher, get your sangha, get your practice assignment, and then get the instructions of how to do it, get them all clear, start doing it. And I can go, if you want to, I can go into more detail about, you know.

[51:34]

And then after that, you just sort of like make it. Basically, the path of equipment and the path of preparation, they're very similar from point of view, same point of view, It's just that the path of equipment ends, or the path of concerted effort starts when you can see the three marks of all conditioned pens at the end of the path of equipment. So when you can see that all the dharmas are marked by suffering, impermanence, and not self, then you finish the first course. Then the next course you'd go into intensification of both meditations. At the ultimate concentration of the path of preparation, you see suffering in the present as it's coming to be.

[52:48]

In other words, you see the suchness of suffering. And then you see the origin of suffering. and then you see cessation, and then you see path. But you still have some bad habits that aren't lined up with your vision, so you're next to death. Anna? Yes. We talked about karma, maybe time. Yes? Yeah, well, part of being intimate with karma

[53:49]

As you start to become intimate with karma, and part of becoming intimate with karma might be that you study some of the karma teachings, right? And then you find about this teaching. Okay? So then, in the process of studying your karma, becoming intimate with your karma, some gaining idea comes up. That's part of what happens as you approach intimacy with something, is you think, hey... I'm really getting a sense of, I'm going to accomplish something here. I'm going to get something out of this. I mean, I heard I might get something out of it, but I put that aside. But now that I'm really getting close, I see, I really might get something out of this. I mean, I'm going to be like, you know, the most intimate... I'm going to be the person that's most intimate with this big horse. I'm going to be the best bull rider at Tassara. That, you will see, detracts from the intimacy. And then you see, oh, so I have to work with this gaining idea that's come up in this new context about learning about karma.

[54:56]

That actually interferes with my study. And so gradually you work around that. You become intimate with that. So it's another thing to express the self in relationship to. It's all things that come up in this process. So it's always provisional. As opposed to, I mean, you were calling it just think, using the term just thinking. But it always implies. Well, one way to translate this word is thinking. Another way to translate it is volition or intention. In other words, what thinking, this understanding would be that in a state of consciousness, in a moment of consciousness,

[55:56]

The thinking is the volition, is the thinking, and the thinking is the volition. What we mean by thinking is the shape of the consciousness. Where the consciousness seems to be tending is what we're calling thinking. It seems like consciousness can have a shape without necessarily this iteration. That's right. For example, I use the example of when consciousness is in a receptive mode, for example, sense consciousness, then the shape, it still has a shape, but the shape doesn't have a tendency. It's like a plate or a bowl. So you don't see a tendency because, in fact, it's a moment where experience is predominant. You're receiving data. Yes? Well, the way, so say it again.

[57:21]

Well, in phenomenology, all consciousness is intentional. Yes. And I think from a Buddhist perspective, that isn't so. We have to find it not to do with the consciousness that's possible, that's the way I understand it. But I'm wondering if, like, intentional in this sense is the same . I guess I'd have to look more into what the phenomenologists are saying. Maybe you could help me do that before I respond to that thing. But I would say that all consciousness Non-dual consciousness is not consciousness. It's not consciousness. It's an awareness that is not consciousness in the sense of... Maybe we have... We have citta and we have vijnana.

[58:22]

And then we have monks. These are Sanskrit words. And all of them are sometimes translated as mind or consciousness. In terms of experience, like seen, heard, tasted, the known, All those kinds of consciousness. Our consciousness is discriminating consciousness. VI means split. Jnana means to know. Knowing which is knowing of difference or knowing of some object which is separate. So that kind of consciousness doesn't become non-dual. But it is possible to develop a kind of understanding of this type of consciousness, which is non-dual.

[59:42]

Now, you could say, well, maybe why don't you call this kind of consciousness citta, the non-dual consciousness. But citta really coexists. This citta, which is another word for consciousness, coexists with this discriminating consciousness. Because that means just the overall impression or the embracing ability of awareness. And humanism means the fact that mind can act upon itself in such a way as to split itself into two so there can be knowledge of the splitting. So all objective knowledge is knowledge based on splitting, which is derived at by the mind being able to act as an order for itself. The overall impression of that is called citta. But citta is citta, even when there's dualistic activity going on, citta is still the same. So in fact,

[60:46]

The non-dual consciousness does not know things. It doesn't recognize what it realizes. So it's not the kind of consciousness that knows things. So in a sense, it's not really consciousness. It is like a byproduct of consciousness. Just like consciousness, in some sense, you could say, and maybe I would say for now, and maybe the next class I'll develop this, Consciousness, in a sense, is a byproduct of physical life. Understanding or enlightenment is kind of the byproduct of consciousness, but it's not consciousness itself. As a matter of fact, Dogen says there's no traces of consciousness in the illumination So it's like this physical light, and then this thing called consciousness rises up above it, and then above consciousness rises up this light, this illumination.

[61:50]

There's no consciousness up in the light. It's like there's no body up in the consciousness. They're all interrelated. So if consciousness can study itself, it turns into light. Just like in a sense, body studying itself turns into consciousness. So maybe, again, what I was telling you is I had a little problem about what order you do things. And I think now that what I would do is, in the next class, I will talk about the origins of consciousness, origins of self, origins of karma. I'll tell you a story about that. And that might help, then, this question and understanding better what karma is. And it helps you become more hidden. If you have a story in the background of how karma arises and how it's a nice, it's a wonderful evolutionary breakthrough for life that this karma thing has happened.

[63:03]

And if you can understand it, some of the drawbacks of karma can be dropped away. Liz, you have to get your number two. Anybody have a number one? First question? Any first question, people? Okay, then the number two is number two. Liz, number two, and Rose, number two. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm thinking about how other beings don't choose to respond, like a leaf on a maple tree. If light shines upon them, it's affected. If it's really floating, it's affected. I'm going to take that light in. I'm not going to take pressure to temperature. It fully responds to everything. Yeah. That's right.

[64:11]

Basically, that question I think would be better dealt with during the next class because I'll be, as I talk about how consciousness evolves into karma and so on, how physicality evolves into consciousness, sense of self and karma, how that all happens, you might be able to see that maybe some light forms fall at different places in this process. that maybe plants and animals do have consciousness, but not necessarily self-consciousness. Tim told me an example of where we might be able to find some signs of self-consciousness in plants. Some other plants, maybe some parts of plants are selfless and other parts are selfish. Maybe some plants are not selfish at all. Like I mentioned to Tim, I think maybe fungi are not So don't have self-consciousness. But maybe redwood trees do. We could talk about that.

[65:15]

But maybe it'd be better to do it in the context of rather than putting them out there. So I'd rather see the picture of the human thing, and then we can see where the other plants and animals will fit into that development. Because theoretically, As we evolved to have self-consciousness and karma and all that and need for practice, they theoretically also could develop the same needs, except the fact that they live in the same planet with us. We're kind of hogging a certain kind of space here. And whenever anything gets too conscious, we have a tendency to feel competitive. So I don't know how well they're going to grow up with us until we're all Buddhists. We'll have to talk about that. The sense of awareness, physiologically, is moving into consciousness.

[66:24]

No, no. The attention to the body. The body is kind of studying itself, turns into consciousness. And consciousness is studying itself. Actually, I'll take two steps. Physicality studying itself turns into sense consciousness. Sense consciousness studying itself turns into mind consciousness. And mind consciousness studying itself turns into light. OK, so my question is, can these different studies drive up simultaneously? They are. Yeah. The old studies have not stopped. The body's still studying itself. And it gets confused sometimes and makes cancer, right? Looks like we got some new selves here, so let's let them go. Other parts say, no, no, no, no, don't know. Those are decent. There's some kind of confusion there. Yeah, body setting itself is going on. It hasn't stopped. Tim?

[67:25]

about practice of suchness and practice of studying karma and whether or not if he was the practice of studying karma kind of like a step back, can the thing be just the thing and still be sort of the study of karma, where it's like at a certain point something comes up and instead of me letting it be just the thought, you kind of do a little analysis on it to try to look behind you in the middle there or try to do a little projection to see where it's heading towards. I got the study of karma talking about. No, no, you don't. I would say that the study of karma could be, what do you call it, you could even understand it as under the heading of let the known and let the thought just be the thought. That's where the study of karma could go. And when I'm not studying, right now, I'm not practicing sessions.

[68:33]

Yeah, I'm not studying karma. When you're not practicing sessions. I kind of fall off of practice. When you get distracted. Yeah, I'm distracted. So what comes up, instead of just being the thought, it is what it's a trigger for a bunch more, sort of karmic. results that happen either karmic either karmic or well first of all that you can say trigger but you know you can say trigger or opportunity okay so something's thought you know like you you see a person's face or you see you see you see this you have this concept of a person's face right you think this like this is kim's face i'm going to have that you know and i think And I see that face and then I say, that face seems to be serious. And then I say, and maybe it's unfriendly.

[69:34]

Maybe it's afraid. These kinds of things. Now the maybe, actually when I said maybe, the maybe is already kind of like a little bit more like suchness. Like if I maybe stop, maybe that's Tim's face. Or maybe this is a Tim. Maybe this is a serious face. Maybe it's a little bit like not getting too brought up about what this face is. Maybe it's getting pretty close to you see a face, but you don't think about who it is or what it is. Okay? So when you see a face and you kind of like... Well, let it just be the face, without even being sure that it's a face, almost. And then you think, well, serious face. But again, you sort of say, hmm, well, maybe serious face. Now, I could maybe find out by saying, excuse me, is that a serious face?

[70:39]

And a person might say... Yeah, it is a serious face. You might say, thank you. Or maybe you would even, in actual practical cases, you might say, excuse me, could I ask you a question? I say, yes. Could I ask you a question about your face? You might say, well, what kind of question do you want to ask about your face? I'd like to ask about, you know, what kind of... And it's sort of a take I had on your face. I wanted to check to see if you would feel that it's what I'm seeing. A person might say yes. Is this a serious face limit? Say yes. And that's that. That sounds to me kind of like more on the practice of Sushma side. I didn't see the study. I appreciate your question because... I didn't stress that, that when you study the karma, I feel it's most beneficial to study the karma in the same way that you study colors.

[71:47]

Usually when you see green, you might not get quite as excited about it unless it was a stop sign or something. You might not get quite as excited about it as when you see a face that seems to hate you. Or when you see your own action of doing some good thing or some bad thing. So the attitude with which you study colors, smells, tastes, touches, and sounds, and thoughts, in order that they just be what they are and you don't identify with them, that attitude of uprightness, that attitude of a mind like a wall, which sees these things and doesn't do all this stuff around, like sees a face, but doesn't say, oh, they hate me, and that's true, and I hate them, and blah, blah, blah. But sees a face, it says, maybe, maybe that's a face. Maybe that's just a face. And maybe I don't know anything more than just it seems to be a face.

[72:51]

That's enough. And maybe I think this face, it hates me, but it's just my impression. It's just an image. It's just an image of a face that I'm interpreting as not liking me. I don't have to get into all the stuff that I would get if I took that face as really hating me. I'm not going to get into that. I'm going to get into just, you know, like that story I tell over and over again. And when I was talking to that woman, I said, I'm not going to believe what I'm thinking about you. I'm not going to believe what I'm thinking about you. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. So when you feel your mind like starting to believe what you're thinking, that's not just a thought, right? That's a thought, what you're saying. That's true. And if this face is an enemy, and that's true, then I'm going to have all kinds of reactions. But if it's just a face, which I call an enemy, but it's a maybe, which we can check out, or just let it be that, that's the attitude you should study your karma too. A mind like a wall studying your karma.

[73:51]

A mind like a wall studying colors. Same attitude. Same practice, obsessionist. But now turning towards karma. Okay? which will come to you, your awareness of karma will come to you, it's got to come to you in these dimensions, either these physical dimensions or that mental conceptual dimension. They're all conceptual, these are all varieties of conception, but there's physical conceptions and mental conceptions. Karma will come to you primarily under that thought because it is basically thinking. But the attitude is the most important thing. The attitude of being upright, of not touching it or rejecting it, of seeing each face and just seeing it looks like a sad face, it looks like a happy face, it looks like a confused face, it looks like an angry face.

[74:51]

It looks like a friendly face. It looks like an unfriendly face. And just stay with that and watch, maybe, the mind starts to get a little excited around that, like, what does this have to do with me? And is this going to be dangerous to me? Is this going to help me? Is this going to cause some respect on me? All that stuff. See if you can find a way of being with the face before all that happens. It's hard because we're so... It's in our tissue, you know? It's in our tissue to be always checking to see, what does this face mean for me? Did this person like me or not? It's very important to us whether other humans like us or not, because other humans are powerful. If they don't like us, it's very dangerous for us. And our tissue feels like that. It's not true at Tazahara. If everybody at Tazahara hated you, you'd still be perfectly safe. Or at least if everybody minus one hated you. These people can hate you, can really not like you, and you're still perfectly safe.

[75:54]

But our tissue doesn't feel like that because our tissue comes from a time when people hated you. That means that they would starve you. They would pack up and leave you in the cold. That's our tissue. Our body is from an old-time body. It's from a time when people are not like they are now. So that's the way our body feels. And our body has set up mental mechanisms to always check to see what these faces look like. Faces are very important. That's part of what I check on the face. I try not to mind read or face read. But let those interpretations just float around and just stay with the phenomenon, including if those are what I'm looking at. So, Christina? Thank you. If you can't do what? Yes.

[77:00]

Yes. Yes. Same practice. Same practice. Always the same practice. Like you say, well, shouldn't you tell people when they're slashing the tires to stop slashing the tires? Well, you know, I could say so, but I could say before you slash the tire, don't slash the tire. So Buddha didn't say, don't do, don't tire. He said, don't slash tires. He said that. So yeah, don't slash tires. Matter of fact, go around and repair everybody's tires. That's what he said. And he also said, purify your mind, which means purify your intention, which means study your karma. Because even like Edselka brought up, even if you go around trying to do good, if your intention's off, it slips back into slashing tires again. If you can be intimate right there while you're slashing the tire, you might slash the tire, but you might wake up.

[78:07]

And again, one of the main reasons to tell people not to slash tires is because if you don't slash tires, as a matter of fact, you do go around repairing people's tires out of the goodness of you, out of wanting them to be happy. You just go around repairing tires, repairing tires, stop your car, help people change their tires, all that stuff. You do all that, and that kind of good karma related to the tires is... Makes it possible that someday, if you should happen to be slashing a tire, you might be able to be present when you do that and really realize, you know, I'm slashing this tire, but this is not really what I want it to do. I just, you know, I just have slashed it, but I really feel sorry. This is, you know, this is the last tire I'm going to slash. And it's the suchness that makes you see that this is not what you want to do. You understand this is not the way you want to live. In other words, you get intimate with that karma, and you become free of that karma.

[79:17]

Right there while you're doing an unwholesome karmic act, by being intimate with it, you become free of karma. become free of self-clinging, you become awake. Because you're basically practicing letting this, what you're seeing, letting these hands, letting these colors, letting these touches just be that. You're there completely, and that's how you wake up. Now, if you practice that way, it tends to make you not get into slashing tires at all anyway. And also actually tends to get you not to get into any karma. You just stop thinking that way. But if you do get into the whole unwholesome karma while still thinking that way, and you do the practice, practice might set you free from the self right at the time. It is possible to be awakened in the middle of doing unwholesome karma. But I've never heard of anybody who awoke doing unwholesome karma that didn't have a lot of fulsome karma in the background.

[80:18]

Awake while doing karma means you awaken from self-delusion. You awaken from the source of karma. First, you awaken from the idea that you are independent. That's what you awaken from. That's the basic darkness. To ignore our inner dependence, our declinical rising, to ignore that is the basic thing you wake up from. So there are stories of people waking up while doing unwholesome things. Or, you know, right after, you know, almost simultaneously. I think I want to know. Well, like I look at your face, right?

[81:23]

And I say, she seems to be treating me in this extremely cruel way. She's just like, and then I might get it too. And I think she's a really cruel person and very dangerous person. I have those thoughts, okay? All right? So I see your face or I hear you say something and then I say you're such or such type of person. I have that thought. She's a dangerous person. All right? That's my thought. Now, To just let that, for me to sit here and say, here I am thinking that Eleanor is a dangerous person, and the thought is just a dangerous person, that's okay. That's very similar to me just making up the story right now. Right? Like I make up the story, and somehow I'm not believing that's true. I really don't believe the story I just made up with Lakshu.

[82:25]

Okay? But if that came to me, and I started to notice, okay, I seem to be almost believing this story of Eleanor being a dangerous person. Then I say, the belief is in addition to the idea that you're dangerous. That's what I was talking about before, this attribution of reality to my images, to my imaginings, to my thoughts. That's the part, the activity of mind around the object. The object is a dangerous person. The activity around it, the activity around it is, this is true, this is true. So I'm saying, try to keep these separate. It's not true. It's not true. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Okay, it's true. It's true. It's true. No, it's not. No, it's not. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, no, no, no. You're just a dangerous person. I have, at certain points in my meditation practice, done that as an experiment. Dream up something. Dream it up.

[83:29]

Put more and more energy into it and then start to see if you can make it real. and watch it start to get real and say, okay, that's enough, back off. And try it again. Get back up. I did that once when I was watching the Super Bowl. There were two teams that were playing with both my hometown teams. It was Oakland, my hometown, and Minnesota, my hometown. So I went to the game and I realized, hey, I can root for either side or neither. So I started out, I don't remember, but anyway, I started out rooting for neither side. Not very interesting. There's just these guys bumping around on this TV screen and these weird guys in the room making all these sounds, you know. Not too interesting just to sort of be a bystander. But anyway, I tried. I gave up. I said, I think I'm going to choose a side. So then I chose a side, just because, you know, it wasn't that interesting to watch this thing without choosing a side, so I chose a side.

[84:32]

And I watched after I chose a side that I started to actually care that that side would win. I didn't like it, this other side, being successful. You know, the good things that they did, I didn't appreciate. The good things these people I did appreciate, I didn't like them to do well, and I liked them to do well. Not only that, but almost everybody in the room was only a one-sided person. They were all on the Oakland side. So when I was on the Minnesota side, I thought these people who were in the room were really obnoxious, rooting for these people who I didn't like. And if I switched back over to Oakland, then I really liked that Oakland was doing well, plus I felt very comfortable to be fitting in better. I mean, I actually tried it out and I actually got caught by this kind of taking sides really, really thinking it's good for this side to win rather than that side. And actually your chemistry starts changing. That's what's called not having a mind like a wall. That's having a mind like a person, a human.

[85:36]

That's called getting ready for karma. But it's also possible to say, okay, I'm just going to have to practice zazen during this game. And I'm not going to have this game be the source of my life. And so it's not going to be very interesting if I don't take sides. But here I am, and I'm just going to watch and not get activated about wishing which side would beat the other side. I'm going to actually watch and study what's going on. And if I start attributing reality to one side or the other, I'm going to drop that and let it just be image after image. This is frightening for people to imagine living in such a cool world. Well, what does that mean to take a side then?

[86:40]

If you go with the side, you don't care if they leave. Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Okay, so I'm on the Minnesota side, but I don't believe it. Yeah, I don't believe I'm really on the Minnesota side. And therefore, when they lose, when they start losing, Since I don't believe I'm on that side, even though I say I am on this side, even though I have the perception on this side, I've got a card which says you're on the Minnesota side. I don't fall for it, so then I don't mind so much if they're losing. I feel sorry for them, no man. So one exercise is like if you're ever watching some sporting event, and if you're sitting on the side with the people on one side... See if you can appreciate the good activities of the team that side you're on, but also see if you can appreciate the good things the team on the other side does.

[87:45]

Like we say, that was really good. And if you listen to the sportscasters, They generally speaking, and I shouldn't say generally speaking, some of them really do appreciate when the other side does a good thing. They say, that was a fantastic catch. But they say it like that. They say, that was a fantastic catch. When the own team does it, they say, it was a fantastic catch, but they're a little bit more excited. I mean, like, huh? Huh? Oh, my. Yes. It's like life. We are live, actually. This is, you know, it's actually fun to be a sportscaster. But it is possible to ungrudgingly appreciate the opposing team. And I guess when your phone team's not doing, when the team you're sort of working for isn't doing too well, you feel a little bad. When the other team's doing well, do you feel not doing well? Do you feel kind of bad for them?

[88:47]

And sometimes, again, the sports announcers, they seem to say, well, if they keep on like this, they're going to lose, you know? But they sometimes say that about their own team. If they keep on like this, they're going to lose. So it's, what is the really balanced way to be with living beings? What is the balanced way, what is the way of intimacy with your life, with your karma? How do you not take side with your own karma? How do you really, really love what's happened always? What does love mean when you're watching a football game? How do you love everything that happens? That's the attitude to study this. So next time I will tell you a story about the origins of consciousness, self, karma, and so on. But in the meantime, I hope you actually enjoy uprightly studying your karma.

[89:56]

It really is fundamental. And it's included under what we've already been doing. I'm just amplifying the fourth category. The heard, the seen, the sensed, and the known. I'm just amplifying that one to include karma. Because karma is such an important evolutionary aspect of that fourth category. But the same

[90:28]

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