Last week I said something like intention is most important or something like that. Does that sound familiar? And actually maybe I would change that a little bit and say intention is very important but our understanding out of which our intention arises is perhaps even more, is most important. Someone after class said something like, well, what about when somebody says, well, my intentions are good, I was intending to be helpful or I was intending... I had good intentions.

[01:03]

I was hoping to be beneficial. And then the person is part of a process that seems to be harmful. What about a case like that? And I thought of an example where It's a story about a person walking along a road and seeing a fish lying by the side of the road next to a pond. And being concerned for the welfare of the fish and having good intentions to do something beneficial for the fish, the person throws the fish into the pond. This person isn't aware that the fish was intentionally taken out of the pond by the person who was growing fish in that pond.

[02:06]

And this particular fish eats all the other fish. So this person took the fish out. so it wouldn't eat all the other fish. When the person who took the fish out saw the person throwing the fish back in, found out that the person threw the fish back in and also the fish subsequently ate the other fish in the pond, then the fish farmer beat up the person who threw the fish back in and pulled the fish out and killed it. So in that story, one thing you might see is that the person had good intentions, wanted to protect the fish, wanted to protect the life of the fish. But maybe that person, we don't know exactly, but maybe that person's attitude was, I'm going to, I see the situation and

[03:10]

That would be good to do that thing I'm about to do, and I'm going to do this thing which I think is good. And he did it. He did what he thought was good, and he thought he did it, probably. Maybe he didn't, but perhaps he did. I don't know for sure. Part of the reason why I think maybe he thought, I'm pretty sure he thought it was, in the story, he thought it was good to do that, But I also think that he thought that he was going to put the fish in there by his own power. So his intention was to do good, but his understanding was that this action was going to be a self-powered action. So his good intentions arose out of a belief that he's going to do the good thing. Now, if he didn't have that attitude, if he's going to do the good thing, he might have had a different attitude, like, I hope a good thing would happen now, but what would be a good thing?

[04:12]

And how did things happen not by my power? How did this fish get out of this pond not by my power? How am I presented? What is the situation here? I'm presented with this fish by the edge of the road. What's it there for? Did it jump out by itself? And you might say, yes, but the fish is going to die pretty soon. You don't have time to do all these philosophical... the fish's life is on the line, you've got to act. Then again, if the fish's life is on the line, is it that you have to act, or is it that we are going to act, all of us together are going to act? And what are all of us together going to do? What does anybody else think? We say, nobody's around, so I have to decide all by myself. There I go again. I have to decide because no one's around. Now, if someone was around, I also could say, I have to decide. But either way, I keep slipping back into, I have to do something, I have to decide.

[05:14]

And that understanding, I'm proposing to you that that understanding, even to do goodwill from that perspective, perspective of self-power, that point of view, that attitude, reenacts ignorance reenacts ignoring how things actually happen. It's an enactment or a reenactment of the, or it's an action based on the ignorance of how things happen, based on ignorance of how what I do or what, you know, my action, the action of this person, it's an It's an ignorance of how my activity is not by my self-power. And again, when we're pressed, we think, I don't have time to like revolutionize my attitude now because this being's welfare is at stake, so I have to do things based on my usual perspective.

[06:26]

And I would say, I guess, I don't know what I would say, but I might say, okay. But if the person said, well, what do you think of what I'm doing? You say, it sounds like you're acting out of ignorance. And you're trying to justify continuing to act out of ignorance because you think that if you don't, it's going to hurt this fish or hurt this being. You don't think there's time to get enlightened between now and the next moment. You've got to act on delusion now, and then maybe when everything's safe for a while, you'll consider changing your attitude. when, you know, intention is definitive, but the most important thing is the understanding out of which, in which the intention lives.

[07:49]

The intention, as I mentioned this weekend at Green Gulch, the intention that arises, one of the types of intention that arises out of the view of self-power is what I call the chronic concern for control. And being concerned for control or trying to control is a stress inducing, is a stress inducing, it is a condition for the arising of stress. Particularly the attitude of I'm going to control creates stress. And often when I'm in stress I may then think I have to do something about this stress. But if you want to control things, then there's no time probably, almost no time when you don't want to control things.

[09:06]

To wish to act, to wish to do something, doesn't have to be wishing to do something with the intention of controlling what will happen. So, for example, you could go visit someone in the hospital and wish to visit them, and perhaps you get there and you do visit them, and you could wish that your visit would be helpful to them. But if you or I think are trying by this visit to control what happens to them or us, then although your intention, your wish is to do something good, it is in the context of ignoring how things happen. Namely, that benefit doesn't arise from my attempt to create benefit.

[10:20]

My actions do not determine what will happen. What happens is determined by the power of others, not the power of me. However, I always make a contribution to what's happening. So although what happens is determined by the power of others, what happens is dependent on others, not on me. It's dependent a little bit on me, but very small percentage on me. What happens is dependent very minutely on me and almost entirely on others. If I think something, if I want something, if I wish something, I am responsible for that. However, what happens around me or around this person who wishes something, what happens is not determined by that wish.

[11:24]

It is almost entirely determined by other wishes, other people and other beings' wishes. None of their wishes also determine what happens. But from my perspective, my wishes I'm responsible for, and I'm also responsible for what happens even though what happens is not due to my power. And other people are responsible for what happens too because it is by their power really that it happens. This understanding is the basis of right action. Right action is the type of action that arises from someone who is meditating on other dependents. Right action arises from someone who does not take too much or too little responsibility for whatever happens.

[12:33]

So, I am entirely for... I am entirely responsible or another way to put it, there's no limit to my responsibility and there's no limit to your responsibility and meditating on that and understanding that is the context in which right action arises and the right action that arises is the right action of me of my right action and your right action but my right action is not due to me and your right action is not due to you your right action is due to you understanding how your right action arises it also if you understood how your wrong action arises, then that understanding would be the context in which right action would arise. So you don't have wrong action when you understand how wrong action arises. But when you do understand how wrong action arises, then you have right action.

[13:43]

On an airplane on the way to someplace recently, I saw this movie, and I think it was called The Gentleman's Game, and it was about golf. And this guy gave this kid golf instruction. He said, you know, tie your ankles together with a belt and then hit the golf balls. If you swing too hard, you'll fall over. try too hard, you'll fall over. He didn't say, if you don't try hard enough, you'll fall over. But that also would be the case. If you just stand there and don't try very hard, you'll also fall over. Can you understand how you might fall over from not trying hard enough? Not paying attention, for example, you'll fall over. But if you swing a golf club, you know, if you swing it carefully and don't worry about exactly how far you're going to hit the ball or how hard you're going to hit it, you could swing the golf club and not fall over.

[14:53]

And still you might think, well, geez, I wouldn't be able to play golf very well. I mean, I wouldn't be able to hit the ball very well with my ankles together like that. But with your ankles together, you might be able to learn what it's like under the circumstances of having your ankles tied to try too hard. And then once you get a feeling for what it's like to try too hard under those circumstances, you might be able to take the belt off your ankles and put your legs farther apart and still be able to feel what it's like to try too hard. Try too hard in the context I'm talking about means think too much that you're the one who's going to make the golf ball go where you want it to go. Now, some excellent golfers, you might think, well, they're trying to get their ball to go in the hole

[16:12]

with as few hits as possible. They're trying to do that. But it may be the case, although, you know, you should have to interview them and, you know, in kind of maybe like interpretive way to get them to demonstrate or express that really the way they play golf, the really excellent ones, is they don't so much think about them trying to control where the ball goes. I don't know. It's possible that they don't think that way, that they are going to make the ball get in the best possible relationship, closest to that hole there on that green as they can get it. They don't think in terms of they are doing that, that it's happening by their power. Maybe they don't. Maybe they do. Maybe even the best ones do. I don't know. But I would say that the teaching of the Buddha is to play golf that way.

[17:21]

And I don't know what your score would be if you could tune into that way of how is it that this person with this golf club has come to be. And then watch, you see. What does this person want to do? Does this person want to play golf now? How does that happen? This person wishes to play golf, wishes to swing a club, wishes to hit a ball, wishes to walk on the grass. How does that happen? And I'm responsible for what I feel and my walking. and the grass and the trees. And everybody else is responsible for my walking in the grass and the trees. So I'm proposing then that these, that right action and also in particular right livelihood would come from such a meditation.

[18:37]

And I also said, I want to say again, that having a good intention or, you know, what I mean, a positive intention, a intention that wishes to benefit oneself and others, wishes not to harm oneself and others, this is called positive or good intention by some people, that the good intention, what's good about that good intention is that good intention the main virtue of that good intention from the point of view of enlightenment is that the good intention will show you if you have the attitude that you are going to be the one who has the power to enact your good intentions whereas if you don't have good intentions you will not become as vividly and acutely and clearly aware of the deluded approach to action to livelihood, to speech. And once again, the more I become aware of my deluded approach, the more I will become convinced and converted away from ignorance towards enlightenment, away from viewing myself

[20:16]

as an independent operator, one who self-powers his action to turn away from ignorance, to ignore ignorance and look at truth, which is that my activity is not self-powered but is arising in concert with all beings. So maybe that's enough for starters. Anything you want to bring up? There's no limits to your responsibility for

[21:21]

for this silence. And no limits to my responsibility for this silence. Tracy? The first session said that you might talk about . Yep, I did. Would you talk more about ? Well. Well, just like, you know, wrong view. So there's a mundane and a super mundane right view. But there's not a super mundane wrong view. There's just a mundane wrong view. So right view is to pay attention. Right view is basically to pay attention to how the world works. And the way the world works is that humans... think that they have the power to do something by themselves. In other words, karma. So mundane right view is to be aware of how the world depends on one or more people.

[22:33]

One person's enough to keep the world going. One person or many people thinking that they have the power to, for example, deliver milk or grow alfalfa. to watch that and to pay attention to how that works and to pay attention that somebody thinks that way is to study karma. And part of the reason why you study it is because you are accepting the teaching that things done with that attitude have consequences. There's a result of thinking that way. And karma is basically thinking in that way. It's basically thinking that your activity is coming from your power. So mundane right view is to study that and with the understanding that it's good to study it because understanding how acting on that basis has consequences will gradually convert you from that

[23:40]

world perpetuating attitude. Wrong view is that karma doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you do. You still think, you still have this deluded view that you do things on your own, but you don't think that there's really any consequence of thinking that way. You don't think it matters that you think dualistically. You don't think it matters that you think in terms of your own power as what determines the way things go. You don't think it matters. You don't think it matters. You don't think it matters. You just do whatever you want. That's mundane wrong view. So wrong livelihood would go with wrong view. It would be a livelihood where you would think, it doesn't matter what I do. I'm not going to get, you know, I'm just going to do whatever benefits me right now. And there aren't really consequences for this attitude, not to mention that there aren't consequences for the attitude of, I do these things, like I sell cars, or I buy real estate, or I'm a nurse, or I'm a doctor.

[24:47]

I do these things, and what I do doesn't really have any consequence. And my attitude of doing them by my own power, that really doesn't have any consequence. Like, I'll get paid whether I think I'm doing it or other people are doing it. That attitude's wrong view. And working that way is wrong livelihood. So you will, I mean, literally, you will do harmful things. You will lie. You will whatever, you know. you'll do harmful things to get your life support. And you think that you get supported by what you do. Now, what you do has something to do with your support, but mostly your support comes from others, not by what you do. And when you're a little baby, you can see that. And when you're old and whatever, you can see that.

[25:52]

Pardon? Even your money what? When you're a baby, you can see that the money you get is not because of what you do, usually. Now, when you get a little older, then they give you an allowance, and then sometimes they start to teach you, well, if you clean your room, you get your allowance. So then you start to think that what you do, not so much start to think that way, but you already are inclined to think that you're doing something to get your parents... to give you food. But a little tiny baby, we can see that the baby's going to get fed by their parents even if they're a naughty baby. Even if they throw their excrement on the wall, they're still going to get fed. And then sometimes the parents say, you have to go to bed without dinner. Sometimes they do that. And so we kind of play that game. But basically, we can see that parents aren't really going to starve the kid usually.

[26:55]

They're just trying to discipline them. And that discipline goes along with the kid thinking of what they can do to manipulate their parents to give them love. First of all, love, because they know if the parents love them that they're going to get the other stuff. So naturally, human beings think in terms of, I do this, and that's going to make them love me. I do this and that's going to make them pay me. That's our attitude, right? Yeah, that's our attitude. And mundane right view, I mean mundane right livelihood would be based on that way of thinking, you try to not do anything that would harm anybody. You try to not do something that's illegal. You try to do something that's not dishonest. That's part of mundane right view. But I would also say that that type of right view keeps the world going.

[27:58]

It just feeds into the system of delusion. And you can be relatively harmless that way, perhaps. But again, the reason why you can be relatively harmless is because everybody's supporting you to be relatively harmless, not because you control yourself into being relatively harmless by trying to be relatively harmless. But if you could understand that really you don't, it isn't because you did X that you got paid. I mean, you shouldn't say, it's true that you did X and you got paid, but it isn't because you did X by your own power that you, by your own power, made this controlled you're getting paid. That wasn't the way it happened. And if you could see that, then your livelihood would become right livelihood. You have two people, or you could have one person and a million people,

[29:01]

And the million people have the attitude of, I do this, and because I do this, I get paid. I do this in order to control the situation such that I'll get paid. If I do this just like this and like that, then I will get paid. In other words, I'm going to get paid because I'm in control of my life. That's what makes me get paid. And you have a person over here who does pretty much the same thing as these other people, let's say, but this person doesn't see it that way, that what they do controls the result. They see mostly what determines the result in terms of their activity is everybody else. They're responsible, but so is everybody else.

[30:02]

And also they are responsible for these other people and their lives too. Because they're not, they're inextricably intimate. This person is one person, maybe one in a million, is holding up the light in the world. This person is free and at peace and happy and is teaching the million people another way to basically live where the activities that we're already doing become right livelihood and become right action, become right speech. So they first become that way by trying to do them from the perspective of self-power. On the basis of self-power, I'm going to try to be as harmless as possible. Okay, fine. And again, that starts to show you that you're still operating in a self-power way and you still be able to see.

[31:07]

And the world just keeps going. I keep getting fed, but I keep being scared. I keep being fed, but I'm not at peace. I keep being fed, but I'm always anxious. I'm stressed. I'm stressed. And I'm developing diseases based on that stress, which is going on all the time because there's no end to this attitude. This attitude is nonstop. this attitude is every moment it stresses us we can't relax meditating on that is part of developing right view right intention and right livelihood to notice that even when you're doing your best at work you're still stressed But the stress is primarily coming, especially this constant stress, is coming from this constant view that you're supposed to get things under control so that you get paid. And so you become, you're always stressed and you get various illnesses based on this stress and that's life in the world.

[32:16]

The right livelihood I'm proposing is a livelihood which will emerge from meditation on the way things actually happen. Yes? Is this then the same concept as the human core life? Yes. It's the same thing? Yes, basically. Yes? Is it possible that the bridge between Monday, right viewer, right livelihood, and Super Monday would be to, that when you know that you have expectation, you're probably slipping into Monday realm because, and that when you come to something without expectation, there's a better opportunity to to experience sort of this inner connection.

[33:24]

But as long as you have expectation, it sort of separates you from other beings. It separates you from what? Other beings. Expectations separate you from other beings, yes. And expectations separate you from seeing your relationship with other beings. It doesn't... Actually, expectations don't really separate you from other beings. Matter of fact, expectations make you even more connected to other beings because you just like them. But rather, having expectations makes you feel separate. And expectation blinds you to your relationship with these other people who have expectations and are also blind to their relationship with you and other people. So actually, we're really close to all these people who share the habit of expecting. We're also, by the way, close to the people who don't expect anything and see and aren't blind to their connection.

[34:26]

So some people see that they're connected to us, and they're right, they are. And other people don't see that they're connected to us, and they're wrong. So trying to control what happens means me trying to control what happens blinds me to beauty, blinds me to seeing dependent core rising. Wishing to control, you know, just like I wish I could control the universe, just wishing that, you know, like, I don't know, wishing to be able to fly or something, that's fine. But to actually try to control what happens from the point of view of I'm going to control what happens when I have that controlling impulse. I'm not controlling, but when I try to control, I blind myself to my relationships. I blind myself to seeing how you give me your support. When I try to control you to support me, I blind myself to how you're supporting me.

[35:28]

When I try to control how the class goes, I blind myself to seeing how all of us make the class happen and how the way all of us make the class happen is reality and is inconceivably beautiful free and peaceful and it's right there all the time right livelihood is the way you work when you see this and right livelihood is the way which celebrates the actuality of our current relationships which we are blinded to if we are trying to control what happens. And if we are trying to control what happens, we can be patient with ourselves because this is a long habit we have. So we're probably going to continue to try to control and therefore continue to be blind to how we're all working together right now.

[36:31]

But if I notice and confess that I'm blinding myself by, forget about seeing reality, I've got to get control here. The more I confess that I'm really interested in trying to control, not to mention in getting control, that I actually, finding something useful is really more important to me than finding what's actual useful. Even though I know that what's useful is only temporarily useful, is only useful right now, and then at the next moment I have to try it again and again, even though I know that that's not a final solution, I'm just trying to get things controlled for the moment. Even though I know actuality will set me and all my friends free later. Later I'll get into that after I get things controlled, even though I know that doesn't make... I can only, I'm not going to get it in control because as soon as I get it in control, then they change. So I have to try again and again and again. So again, constant stress.

[37:35]

Yes? Yeah. You know, when I was abbot, the main thing I tried to do, and I'm not saying I was able to do it, the main thing I understood was my job was to know the hearts of the community. I thought, that's my job. That's what I tried to do, is to understand the hearts of the community members. And so in one sense, if somebody understands the hearts of the community members, it's a healthy community. Another way of understanding it is if somebody understands the hearts of the community, that person who understands the way that they eat, the way that they walk, the way that they sit, is coming from the understanding of the hearts of the community. And so what do you see?

[38:43]

When you see somebody who understands the hearts of the community, it's very much the same as seeing somebody who understands her relationship with everybody. Because this person understands their hearts. And this person's life is actually all those other people. Because this person's job is to understand those people. That's all this person has to do. So his relationship or her relationship with these people is really who this person is. When a person realizes that, then when you look at that person, you see a happy person. So you have a happy leader who's not trying to control. Now, when I was first abbot, actually, I did try to control, especially some of my closest students I tried to control. And, you know, I couldn't. I had really good students because I couldn't control them. I tried to make them into my idea of good Zen students, and they were very good.

[39:46]

They wouldn't be my idea of good Zen students. My wife says, you have just the students you deserve. But, you know, one way of saying that is, I'm a fantastic person because I have such excellent students. I have students who won't buckle under my view of what they should do. That's how great I am. I have students who are not being little rebs. Even that. See, now here's another one of those guys. My students tell me I don't even have right view. Not only that, but their view that I don't is wrong. And that's the kind of students I have. Which is the perfect kind to have. Rather than they're all sort of lined up agreeing with you.

[40:49]

You got them under control. No. That's not real. People are different. They're not little versions of the teacher. And when you see a situation like that, you see an unhappy leader. If the leader ever got everybody to be like him, so all the students were little versions of the teacher, the teacher would be very, very unhappy because the teacher would have killed the beauty of the community. The beauty of the community is not all these nice little shining people. The beauty of the community is how they're all interdependent with each other, how they're helping each other, how they are realizing that none of them are acting by themselves. That's an illusion. And they're enacting the understanding that it's an illusion, that we control ourselves or others. But I had to try to control them for a while before I woke up. So I woke up a little.

[41:51]

And it's a repeated thing. I've told that story many times about my dog, right? You know the story of my dog, right? Huh? As a what? When I was a boy? What? This is after that. This is when I was an older boy, when I was a big, a larger boy. I had this dog. She was, I think, a terrier, golden Labrador mongrel. And I named her after Dr. Zervago's girlfriend, Lara. So this is when that movie was out. So I named my dog after Julie Christie. Anyway... To make a long story short, one time my dog got pregnant.

[42:53]

I didn't want her to get pregnant. I'm going to leave out that part. Anyway, she got pregnant. And as she approached being time for delivery, the opening the birth opening space, the vaginal surface area starts to open and make space and also various kinds of fluids are oozing out in preparation for the coming of the puppies. See that happen? So anyway, so she was kind of dripping various blood-like fluids were kind of dripping out of her back end. and they would kind of drip on the floor, and if she laid down on something, the surface would become, you know, covered by this red gooey stuff. So she had her bed in the kitchen. The kitchen had a linoleum floor. That's where she was supposed to be, and her bed in the kitchen.

[43:57]

But she liked to get up on my bed, and my bed had, you know, like, white pillowcases on pillows and stuff like that, so I didn't want her to get up on my pillow and get all this red gooey stuff on my pillow. Blood and mucus and whatever else it was, you know. That's what she wanted to do, so I had to keep telling her, shooing her away from my pillows, where she could sleep when she wasn't all oozing, you know. So one time she... She was in there, you know, and I shoot her out. And then I went out of the house, and I came back in, and I came in, and she was up on my bed, and she was sitting on top of my pillows. And there was this red, gooey stuff all over my white pillowcases. So, you know, I didn't, like, tune into Dependent Corps Rising.

[45:01]

you know, and see how, you know, like, all beings, you know, have come together here, and now we have this beauty, you know, the beauty of my lovely dog and red over the white, red, shiny, gooey stuff on white cotton. I didn't see the beauty of it. I thought more like, I'm trying to control her to get off my bed, and now I lost control. So I said, you know, get into your bed. So she went into her bed. And I went over to clean up the mess. And there in the back of my pillows was four little puppies. And so then I said, oh, you can go, you can be on that pillows.

[46:07]

But, you see, seeing the foolishness of trying to control life. And she helped me, you know, by, she didn't snarl and try to defend her point. Blood into that area and keep it off my pillows. This is what we do. So we don't see the beauty of We don't see the love of the dog for her puppies, of the dog for her master. When I try to control, I become very stupid and sometimes harmful. I didn't kick her across the room, but that's sometimes what people do. They kick the dog. They kick the person who's making the mess. They kick the kid who spills the bread. You know? We do things like this because we're trying to control. We don't see the beauty. And we're stressed. We're in pain.

[47:12]

We're scared. And then we act from there. We're in the mode of me trying to control, we lose control, and then we fight, etc. Right? How do we switch? So I'm not saying I switched at that time, but it was a good lesson. It was a good lesson in how foolish I am to try to control this dog rather than learn from the dog, learn from the blood, learn from everything. Like, how is this happening? How is this happening? How is my life coming together right now? to walk in the room and see beauty rather than ugliness because it's not what I expected.

[48:13]

It's not what I was trying to make happen. It's ugly. But really, it's me trying to control that makes it ugly. Me trying to control, it blinds me to the beauty. The room's the same. In one case, it looks ugly. Ugly to have all that stuff all over my pillow. Ugly. It's ugly because I'm trying to control. Take away the try to control and it turns into beauty. When I told the story, you saw the beauty. I couldn't see it. You weren't trying to control. You could see it. Yes? If you don't try to control, there's no pain. Well, there might be pain like, you know, excuse the expression, a broken leg, but you won't be stressed about it.

[49:20]

So there's not emotional pain? Huh? There's not emotional pain? Well, there might be emotional pain like you see somebody, you see somebody gouging their flesh and you might feel pain, emotional pain, but it doesn't stress you, you know. It doesn't make you sick. And not only that, but even though you have pain, physical or mental pain, because you're close to a body and you're close to other beings who are suffering, basically you're free and happy to be with beings who you understand are your life. And that understanding is you see beauty even at the same time that you feel some discomfort. So basically, if we don't try to control, we open our eyes to beauty. And sometimes in order to learn to give up trying to control, we sometimes have to try to control.

[50:28]

But we're already trying to control. But sometimes we have to even amplify our attempts to control to be able to see how foolish it is. And once we see how foolish it is, we can renounce it. And when we renounce it, We see beauty, we are free. We see truth, we are free. And if pain arises, we are free. Buddha, when Buddha was dying, Buddha was sick, you know, Buddha was in pain. But Buddha was still Buddha. Buddha was still like completely free, you know, giving wonderful, joyfully giving the Dharma to everybody he met. Like that story I told you a couple weeks ago, right? When he was dying, his disciples tried to, one of his disciples tried to give him, you know, keep people away from him. But he still wanted to teach and it was still a joy to teach. Well, how do you make decisions, ladies and gentlemen?

[51:41]

From what place? It's not so much not controlling, but you give up control. When you give up control, when you give up control, what I mean actually is not that you give up control. You never had control. I'm talking about giving up trying to control. If you have control, go ahead, have a ball. It's the trying to control that we're involved in. We're trying to control. Trying to control is stressful because you're trying to do something that's not possible. You're not in control. You are not in control. I am not in control. I wasn't in control of my dog. I was trying to control my dog. It created stress in our relationship. If you try to control your students, it creates stress in your relationship. If you try to control your children, it creates stress.

[52:52]

And if you're trying all the time to control your children, you have chronic stress. It's not that you give up control, it's that you give up trying to control. Now, if you give up trying to control, then you get to see how decisions arise. If you give up trying to control, you take your blinders off and you see how decisions arise. They arise from the power of others, not from you. Your decisions, the decisions of Patty Hawes, arise in Patty Hawes by the power of others. They arise from me and Linda and Christian and your uncle. They arise from gravity and moon and star and rain and your body and your teeth and your brain. Everything together, other than Patty, gives rise to Patty's decisions. That's the Buddha's teaching according to me.

[53:56]

If you don't see it, number one, you see how you don't see it. And number two, notice what you're doing to blind yourself. Not only don't I see it, but this guy says the reason why I don't see it is because I'm trying to control, and I sure am trying to control. And I'm trying to control my decisions, and I'm trying to make my decisions like go right over to the good decision area. I'm trying to get myself to make good decisions, and I'm trying to get my children to make good decisions, and my parents to make good decisions, and my boss and my employees. I'm trying to get everybody under control. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, and I am one stressed cookie. I don't know how much longer I'm going to keep doing this, and maybe someday I will finally get things under control. You know, here's another example. I'm at the house I live in, and my daughter used to live with us, my wife and me. I'm kind of the one who cleans the house. The other people don't.

[55:05]

If I leave town, they clean the house. But when I'm in town, they don't clean too much. If I leave town, they will wash the dishes. But when I'm there, somehow, I don't particularly wish to wait for a week to do the dishes. I mean, wait a week for them to do the dishes, so I do the dishes. Okay? But, you know, if I try to control the house into being tidy, it's a constant stress. So I have to, like, forget about controlling the house if I want to be happy. But still one time they went away, the two of them went away for about a week. And after they were gone for a few days, the house actually got under control. It was like, it was like clean, you know, totally clean. It was like done. And it stayed that way. You know, hour after hour, day after day, it just kept, it kept like being clean and everything in order.

[56:10]

you know, but then I want him to come back and mess the house up because that's not life. It's an illusion that sometimes appears, you know, like finally you get it. That's not life. So not only don't I see the beauty, not only do I see how everything comes together to create my decisions, but I know what I'm doing not to see it. Namely, I'm trying to make my decisions happen. i'm trying to find it but i mean i know the seventeen decisions i could make here but which is the best and trying to get the best one trying to control the best decision coming and i know and i see the connection between that and being blind to how the decisions can arise including the beauty of the wrong decision all decisions the way they happen is beautiful no decisions if you see how they happen, are not beautiful.

[57:18]

And if you see the beauty of a bad decision, of a harmful decision even, a decision which might lead to harm, seeing the beauty of it, you're in the dimension, you're in the channel, you're in the station of being able to see how to protect beings with a bad decision. You know, like, for example, okay, you can get back in the bed. It was a bad decision, but then I saw something. So then I, okay, okay, okay, okay, I'm stupid. I'm saying that the way this world's working right now, you know, like I saw in some magazines that I was a New Yorker, I guess. It's a 50-50 world, but one side has all the power. You know?

[58:25]

And basically, I'm saying that if you look carefully without your controlling impulses operating, controlling impulses operating, and you see the beauty then cancer looks as beautiful as a cancer cell looks as beautiful as a healthy cell. And war looks as beautiful as peace. I'm saying that. However, if you can see the beauty of war, you're in the mode of bringing peace. because when you see beauty you're a peacemaker because you're at peace you're happy and you are devoted to take care of the beauty and help other people wake up to it and when people wake up to beauty they become healthy they're going to war the conditions for war war depends on people being blind you can't you can't go

[59:36]

you know, invade people and drop bombs on people who you see as your own children. You can't do it. You just sit down and, you know, you're unable to participate in any harm once you see this beauty. But if you see war as ugly... That's very similar to the way the people who are for the war see the situation. They say, the people who seem to be threatening war are saying, I want peace. And those people over there, they want war and they're ugly and I must eliminate them. I'm not connected to them. They are evil. I am good. We're not interdependent. We're not working together.

[60:39]

This keeps the world going as you know it. So the world's going. The world is going. Right? It's cranking away. So not seeing the beauty in the way the world's cranking keeps it cranking. Seeing the beauty in it offers a moment for something different to happen. To, for example, be loving in a situation which would otherwise just be horrible and which you would run away from or try to control. And by trying to control, continue to blind yourself to it, to its beauty. But many people who come to Buddhism, they think that they're shocked to hear me say something like that the way evil actually happens is as beautiful as the way good happens.

[61:44]

The way harm happens is basically the same way that protection happens. The way that harm happens is by ignoring interdependence. And the way that protection happens is by being aware of it. But they both happen interdependently like that. And the interdependence of harm is no more, less beautiful than the interdependence of evil. Therefore, we can help where there's harm if we see that. we can see that life over here where things are harmful is as deserving of our attention and our openness and our kindness as life over here where things seem to be going the way we'd like it. Yes?

[62:50]

Last week you were talking about Initially, we gain an understanding of mundane truth, and then that leads to super-mundane. Mm-hmm. And then that leads to the noble truth, and then to the ultimate. It's like a cycle. You said something about ultimate. First, we learn mundane what? Mundane and super-mundane. Yeah, super-mundane means ultimate. Same. Same. Super mundane means, ultimate means that you actually become free of the world and you're not perpetuating the world anymore by your understanding. Then the truths actually become noble truths, yeah. Then you do these practices like you did before. You still have a livelihood, but your livelihood doesn't have outflows anymore. It doesn't have taints. Why doesn't it have taints? It's not tainted by the view that you're separate from other beings, for example.

[63:55]

And before you've purified your vision, you still try to practice the Eightfold Path, but each step of the Eightfold Path, as it says in the Scripture, each step of the Eightfold Path is a mundane process because you don't understand yet. However, it's still, it says it's still beneficial because it shows you you're learning how the world works. You're seeing how your problems arise. You're starting to understand how the mess is created. You're starting to see how suffering arises. You're starting to understand how the world works. you're still involved in the process of how suffering arises. And as you see that more and more clearly, you see how it ceases. then from that view you go back and you do the practices but now you're seeing how the practices instead of keep the world going you see how the practices can celebrate freedom rather than how the practices show you what keeps you in bondage so the practices of the Eightfold Path prior to having a view of the ultimate prior to understanding selflessness

[65:19]

and dependent core rising. You practice the Eightfold Path, but you're still in the worldly way of practicing it. However, the good thing about the practice is it shows you what is worldly about what you're doing. And then you see how, because you see things this way, you have these problems, and these problems keep you in bondage. So you see over and over again what you're doing to keep yourself trapped. So the mundane eightfold path shows you how you're in bondage and how you suffer. So the first two truths are the truth of suffering and the origins of suffering. So when you first practice the eightfold path, you're seeing suffering and the origin of suffering, suffering and origin of suffering, suffering and origin of suffering, origin of suffering and suffering. You're seeing this over and over again. Each of these practices shows you the first truth. These are the truths of the world. Truth of the world is suffering arises depending on things, and these things it depends on we have, so suffering arises. And then because suffering arises, we have habits to do the things which make it happen again.

[66:23]

So we have this cycle. We're seeing the cycle. The Eightfold Path helps us see it. The more we see it, the closer we get to the source, the closer we get to the ignorance, the closer we get to giving up the ignorance and then we move into the second two truths of cessation and the path which celebrates the cessation where you're like living and demonstrating you're like a person in the world who's primarily concerned not with how to get what you want not trying to avoid what you don't want not about controlling yourself or controlling others you're primarily concerned understanding people's hearts you're primarily concerned with understanding your relationship with them in other words our relationship is actually understanding each other's hearts and in fact that's what we actually are is we are

[67:29]

what arises from the kindness of other people that's what we actually are and to see people's hearts is to see how kind everyone is to you when you see that then you're practicing the Eightfold Path the Noble Eightfold Path the source of suffering is not there anymore when you're trying to learn to see the hearts of people you might still go separate, and then notice how that feeling of separate makes it hard for you to be spending your time trying to understand people's hearts because you have better things to do than understand people's hearts. The better thing is to control people's hearts. Get them to do what you think is good. Get them to vote, you know, another way. Get them to vote for who you like.

[68:33]

That's the world. And don't you sort of want people to vote differently than they are if you're in the half that doesn't have any power now? So most people in the Bay Area feel kind of like out of the power. So wouldn't they like to sort of have things be different? That's what we're concerned with. And the people who are in power, they're kind of like, let's see if we can keep it. This is the world. I'm talking about trying to understand the hearts of people rather than get them to vote the way you want them to vote. Try to understand their hearts rather than get them to do what you want. And you can tell people what you want, but do you tell people what you want to get them to do what you want?

[69:37]

Or do you tell people what you want as part of your practice of trying to understand them? And part of understanding people, part of the way to understand people is to tell them what you want. Telling people what you want does not, as you may have noticed, does not control them. But it helps in the understanding of their heart for you to tell them what you want because then you can see what they do when you tell them what you want. Are you primarily interested to see what's actually happening or how to get them under control? And again, sort of like, well, the people that are on my side, I'm interested in what's happening with them. Because you've already got them under control. Once I have everybody under control, then I'll try to understand them.

[70:38]

So the people already on my side, I got them under control, so I'm interested in them. People aren't on my side, I want to get them under control. And after they're under control, then I'll say, well, how are you feeling now? Right? The dictator often says, well, how do my people feel? Are you happy subjects? You see, I'm really interested in you now that I've got you under control. Before you were under control, I had to, like, get you under control. And I wasn't so interested in what you had to say because for your own good, I had to get you under control. Does that sound familiar? This is called The World. Like, I know this person, you know. Yeah, it's a good book. I know this person who's been in college for 10 years, and I... I've been supporting her and thought recently crossed my mind to tell her that I'd like her actually to graduate but tonight I'm thinking how can I bring this up but not from not from not from the controlling side and just say I just say I'll just maybe just say would you please graduate from college

[71:51]

You didn't quite make it. Pardon? You didn't quite make it as far as... See the kind of students I have? You know, I've got to keep you now, too. You're a keeper. Of course, I'd like to get rid of him, but actually, the rest of you are being rather civil about this. But this guy, boy. But this is what the kind of students I need, the ones who don't agree with me and sort of say that I'm not, you know, I'm not really a Zen master. Okay, so Roy, what do you think? How would you do it? Well, I wonder that you love her and that you would know why she didn't say congratulations. I think you should tell her that. Because I don't know if I'd delight in her graduation.

[72:58]

And I do tell her I love her quite frequently. Because I don't know if I'd delight in her graduation. I might cry at her graduation. Because I'm like her. I actually would like her to go to college forever. But actually, I also want her to graduate because I think i think it's time for her to move on that's how i feel huh i think that's sort of what i'm going to say i think it's time to move on but also i want you to tip my hand and i can say well how do you feel about that she may or may not So I'm talking about a radical shift in our life. And I'm suggesting that there's two worlds in Buddhism, actually.

[74:06]

They're both worlds of living people. One's the world of the world, and the other one's the world of not the world. But they're both life. One's the world of... and the other one's the world of limitless... peace and happiness and no one you're trying to control how things go which keeps him going that way and the other is you've given up trying to control and you're actually enjoying and you're studying you're appreciating you're watching and trying to understand rather than be in control, including that you watch and interested and see the beauty of any impulses to control.

[75:07]

So that when they arise, you have the same practice. If they arise in you or others, same practice. You watch, try to understand the heart of the one who has the impulse to control. Watch the heart of the one who says, I want you to do this. I want you to do this.

[76:13]

And there's a little bit of a little, kind of little ghosty thing that wants to get you to do it. But I see that part, that's the part I kind of let go. That's the world perpetuating part. It's floating around there. But there's also just, I want you to do this. And I'm not telling you that to get you to do it. I'm just telling you I want you to. And I want me to, too. At least you. And then maybe some other people, too. Thank you very much.

[77:13]

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