I'd like to reiterate the basic background of the discussion of four noble truths and I could say of the discussion of Buddhism in general, and that is, in the context of being alive, or perhaps I should say in the context of sentient life, or in the context of sentient being, being upright, in the context of sentient being, is nirvana. Not being upright, in the context of a sentient being, or being a sentient being, or being

[01:16]

a sentient being, is sam-sara, sam-sara, that's what I would say, this is not necessarily the case of, I don't know what, something, in sentient being, maybe this doesn't hold, so if one, if there's sentient life, there's two opportunities of being upright and not being upright, those are the two options which I propose, which have two results, or two ways of living that go with that, one's called nirvana, the other's called sam-sara, and sam-sara means circle, so sam-sara is a way of life which goes round and round and round

[02:22]

and round [...] and round, and it's really miserable all the time, nirvana doesn't go round and round and round and round, it's just pure presence, it doesn't come or go, and it's always swell. By the way, as you may have heard, nirvana is so swell that anything you say about it is an insult, therefore in the early days of Buddhism they said nirvana's not this, nirvana's not that, nirvana's not that, nirvana's … everything about nirvana was not, not, not, or un-un-un, or non-non-non, because to say even … I just said, you know, sorry, excuse me, nirvana, I said it was swell, even to say it's swell is an insult, anything you say about it isn't it, so it's more accurate to not say anything about it. Now, it's okay actually to say it's swell because that's of course absolute truth, but the problem of saying that is that people think that when things aren't swell that

[03:27]

that's not nirvana. You know, you're a sentient being and you're in an un-swell situation so you think, well, this isn't nirvana, or something, so you know, the reason why it's not usually said to be this or that is because then people might grasp it, and grasping it is … It's not. I'm sorry, it's not being upright. So kind of like in the early days they kind of wanted to make it easy on people and not set lots of booby traps, so they said nirvana was un-un-not-not-not, so then the people wouldn't be so likely to grasp nirvana. But really it is extremely swell and all that, it's just don't be … just stay upright when you hear about that. So that's the basic situation, and that's my faith, okay? Now I also wrote, you know, sometimes I sort of played and said, you know, not being upright in samsara, of course, is more samsara, but not being upright in nirvana is samsara.

[04:33]

So it's possible that you could be upright, be in nirvana and then not be upright and then you kick out of nirvana. Similarly, if somehow you haven't been upright and you find yourself in samsara, then if you practice being upright in samsara, that's nirvana. So basically life, just flat-out life before it takes any alternatives, which is hard for it not to actually, but just plain life, being upright, nirvana. Then in nirvana, if you have life nirvana and you're not upright there, you kick out of nirvana back to samsara, and in samsara then to be upright you go back to nirvana. So there could be just sentient life without taking these alternatives and then what I said originally would hold. But if we veer off at all towards samsara, again to practice being upright, we get saved again. And then when we're saved, if we mess around in our saved state, we lose it. Okay?

[05:36]

Is that clear? Seems pretty clear to me. But, of course, it's very hard to be upright when you're freezing. This room is like sweltering and people look like they're freezing, because you haven't forgot yet that you're in this room and you haven't forgot that you're not outside anymore. So I want to say one more time, I would really encourage you to take a stand on the doctrine of rebirth. I would say again, you either believe it or you don't. If you believe it, you believe it, and if you don't, you don't. If you don't, however, believe it, that doesn't mean you have to deny it.

[06:37]

You can just say, I don't believe it, but that's it, I just don't believe it. I don't get it. I don't understand that it's that way. I don't see this. But that isn't the same as denying, that's saying, I don't know, and that's a stance. And you can be really strong, you can strongly say, when I say I don't believe it, I mean I don't understand that it's true. I'm not convinced. But to not be convinced of something, you really aren't convinced when you're not convinced. That's it. That's a powerful stand. That's a powerful situation, you're not convinced. But not being convinced does not mean you deny something. If you're convinced, you're convinced. If you're not, you're not. And you don't have to be dogmatic about not being convinced either and deny what you're not convinced about, okay? So where you stand, that's what's important. You should know where you stand, find out where you stand, and be decisive about who you are and how you feel about this, and then watch that, maybe it'll evolve.

[07:39]

So I will continue to talk about, in terms of this cycle, this samsaric cycle, I will continue speaking like that, but that doesn't mean that I believe that. It just means I am dealing with that. I'm dealing with the Buddhist teaching, which uses that kind of language, which I find quite helpful, actually. So although I don't necessarily believe the stories of rebirth the way some people do, I definitely find them useful. So what I'd like to do now is actually show you how useful they are in terms of understanding Buddhist teaching of karma. So today I'd like to get into teaching karma, which is another aspect of right view, the first aspect of the Eightfold Noble Path. Eightfold Noble Path is eight folds of being upright, right? So the first aspect of being upright is uprightly dealing with certain issues, like uprightly dealing with rebirth, now uprightly dealing with the laws of karma.

[08:42]

Right view is not the laws of karma. Right view is understanding the laws of karma. Understanding the laws of karma means developing the proper response to them. Okay? Right view is not the laws of karma, it's having the right view of the laws of karma. So right view means, please deal with these topics, right? These topics are the curriculum of right view, so you're developing the right attitude about the following topics, rebirth, karmic cause and effect, the possibility of liberation, and these kind of things, the Four Noble Truths. Okay? And I'd like to deal with karma in essentially two levels. First level is the laws in the sense of how karma works, and then the root of the cause, and then how to develop the right attitude in the midst of the root of the cause, which

[09:49]

is then to remove the root of the cause, which is then to become free of karma. Those are different layers, okay? Which I probably will interlace them, but those are the things to keep in mind, okay? So right away, just to say that one of the laws of karma, not law of karma, but one of the stories about karma, the etiology of karma, etiology of karma is, what's the etiology of karma? Action? Huh? Action. No, etiology, not the etymology. Etymology is actually the etymology of karma in action. What's the etiology? Craving. Craving, or delusion, specifically delusion. That's the etiology that the conditions giving rise to karma is delusion, giving rise to an illness. Conditions that give rise to an illness, not the diagnosis.

[10:51]

The diagnosis is karma. What's the etiology? Delusion. So, there's many things to talk about here, but basically, the law is, virtuous actions lead to good results. Non-virtuous actions lead to bad results. That's the basic rule. Doing good leads to good results. Doing bad leads to bad results. That's the law. Now, also, I just parenthetically mentioned, parenthetically, this morning I read that case where it says something like, you know, what is it, anybody have the book of Theranidae? I forgot. Anybody remember the last two lines of the verse I said this morning? State what it is. Where is it? Can I have it, please? I can find it easily. Thank you. Thank you. I thought of karma when I read this.

[12:03]

Before the seal, wide-open emptiness, originally there's no writing. So before you put the seal, seal of delusion down, everything is just interdependent, right? Then you put this seal of delusion down, and then there's karma. Or before there's writing, originally there's no writing on the universe, but as soon as there's writing like self, other, and these are separate, then there's delusion, and then born of that delusion of self, distinguished from other, with that seal of self separate from other, the seal put on things, then there's karma. Like that thing I draw all the time, as soon as you put this seal with a bump on it, put that seal with a bump on the world, then there's delusion.

[13:12]

And by the way, Dogen Zenji is very astute in this point, is that when he says in the Genjo Koan that, you know, to practice and confirm all things, in other words, to live your life while carrying a self on top of it, that is, quotes delusion, quotes delusion. Because this is just the definition of delusion, there really is no such thing as delusion, there really is no, you know, life with a self on top of it, there isn't like a sentient life and then you have a self on top of the sentient life, the self is part of the life, but to see your life as the universe plus a bump, that's, quotes delusion, there is no such thing, that's why it's in quotation marks, that's just a definition of delusion, that's just how delusion appears, there is no such thing, of course. Action is based on, what do you call it, the epistemology of action, of karma, is that

[14:20]

it's based totally on something that doesn't really exist, delusion, it's based on quotes, blah, blah. So, he doesn't say that to carry, to walk around living your life while carrying a self is delusion, actually he says, that is what's called delusion or that is quotes delusion, but he doesn't put enlightenment in quotation marks, but he should. Okay, so that's the basic definition of karma. Now another important, another very important teaching of karma is that karma, that the results of karma happen in three times, it's another law. And also another law is that karma increases, that the results of karma increase over time. So one of the implications of that is the longer it takes for something to come to fruition,

[15:23]

the worse it gets, or the longer it takes to come to fruition, the better it gets. If it's good karma and it takes a long time to reach fruition, it'll be really good by the time it does, and if it's bad karma and it takes a long time, it can be really bad, or also some really bad karma takes a long time to reach fruition. That's why to do some bad thing and you say, hey, no problem, hey, look at that, I did it, I got by with it, wow, and then the next day, hey, I still have no problem, and the next day, wow, no problem. And so, it doesn't work that way though. So one of the things which, and then another aspect is that practice, although karmic consequences always fulfill themselves, another rule, it's like the law of gravitation, they never don't fulfill themselves, they go on forever, until they're fulfilled.

[16:27]

The consequences of karma, it's not like when you do something, it has a consequence and the consequence goes off and then, you know, somebody loses track of it and falls off the edge of the universe, you know, he gets ejected from the cosmos, no, all acts have results and the results always are fulfilled, they never get blocked. However, practice interacts with results, because sentient life itself is the result of karma to a great extent, and if you practice being upright in the midst of the results of karma, that's nirvana. So some people have some really rough karmic consequences raining down on them, but they practice being upright in the midst of those intense karmic consequences and they realize nirvana in the middle of intense karmic consequences. Other people have kind of nice karmic consequences raining down on them, you know, like relatively

[17:35]

pleasant, sweet rain, but they don't practice being upright, so they're in misery of various types. And then because they're in misery because they don't practice being upright, then they react to that misery again, maybe, with not being upright, and they can get in big trouble, go down, down, down that way. So the basic cycle is delusion, karma, karmic results, then responding to karmic results, from delusion, more karma, more karma, more karmic results, you know, more sentient life of a certain type, then again being deluded, acting from the delusion, more karmic results and round and round you go. However, if when you experience a karmic result, which means pain and pleasure, for example, if you practice being upright, that is not karma. Also being upright is not delusion, it's just, oh, that's all.

[18:39]

This karmic result is a pain and you just be upright there, that's an undeluded response to it. It's not karma, it doesn't have karmic results. However, even though it doesn't have karmic results, you've got karmic results coming down all the time. So karmic result, be upright, that's not deluded, that's not karma, and then another karmic result, be upright, that's not delusion, that's not karma. So in that way, by practicing being upright, you're in nirvana at the moment, plus you're also exhausting karma, which is coming at you, boom, [...] boom. Or boom, [...] whatever, anyway, it's coming at you, recognizing as it is, not leaning into it or away from it, that's nirvana on the spot, plus, but it's nirvana in perhaps hell, or it's nirvana in a polluted, overheated cesspool, but it's nirvana,

[19:42]

nirvana can be there very nicely. However, then another one comes, and not necessarily the same one, sometimes an easier one, or a harder one, you get used to practicing being upright in hell, and then you get thrown into heaven, and then whole new skills have to be applied in heaven, and you get used to heaven, negotiating all this kind of like nice stuff, and boom, you're back in some other situations. So, being upright, of course, is infinitely requesting skill, skill, skill, with all these karmic results. This is presentation time, so I'm just going to … you people, please, assert your position and I'm not going to call on you. Be yourself, feel what you feel, but I'm not going to call on you, I'm going to do more presentation for a while. So, another thing about this thing, which is cool, anyway, one of the things is that if you're going to be an arhat, what you have to do in this life, if you're going

[20:47]

to be an arhat in this life, is you have to do a massive burnout towards the end. In other words, you have to bring all your karmic consequences in and face them uprightly before you die, that's the price of being an arhat, but it's not that bad, by the following principle, and that is, some things we've done in the past have a natural maturation level, a balloon payment kind of thing, right, which has been building up interest for a long time, and then when it finally comes, it's this huge thing. So, some things we've done in the past, they're natural maturation, they have a long natural maturation rate, and when they actually happen, they're extreme, extreme suffering. Okay, that's their natural thing, can you follow that? However, if you practice being upright, what you do is you, what do they call it, you bring

[21:56]

in the payment early, you pre-pay, so Action X has this really, it's natural trajectory is real long, and therefore it's accumulating power the whole time. If you practice being upright, it isn't that you stop this thing from being fulfilled, it's that you shorten the trajectory and you bring it down before it reaches full maturity in full mass, so you experience it earlier. You don't stop it, you don't postpone it at all, you experience it earlier. I haven't heard that if you don't practice that you forestall the payment and make it worse later, I haven't heard that one, I think you just sent out another bomb, but you do. But practice can foreshorten the trajectory of certain karmas which are really, really, really, almost no one could stand them. So the Arhat, by burning up all the karma at this lifetime, it's not so bad, although

[23:02]

it's real intense because you do it all at once in one lifetime, you foreshorten a lot of real bad stuff, so it's conceivable that you could survive paying off all those debts towards the end, but it is still pretty tough, they do sometimes have a hard time towards the end, our Arhats do, whereas extreme earners die more pleasantly because they're not trying to finish it off all at once here. Now one of the other principles here is that, of practices, some of our sufferings are coming to us in this form because we're practicing. Some of the annoying things that are happening to us are happening to us because we're practicing. In other words, if we weren't practicing, these things wouldn't be happening to us, they would happen later, and they would be much, much worse. So this is one way to understand our life.

[24:09]

There's a chair right up here, you want to sit up here, Garry, you want to stand? Okay, less likely to fall asleep that way, however it's hotter up there at that altitude. Anyway, some of the things which are annoying us, we could adopt a policy of this annoying thing like this person, these people making fun of me, these people laughing at me, my ill health, my lousy position, whatever, these kinds of things are happening to us, you could understand, yes, they are painful, but if you're practicing, and even to consider this, maybe you're practicing, if you're practicing, either this is, well, two ways, either this is like this is the result of the thing, you should be upright with it, or you should really be happy because what you're experiencing here in this minor pain is actually a foreshortened, softened version, metaphor for something that's much, much worse, so you should be very thankful to all these people who are insulting you, because they're vehicles for a very low-cost

[25:16]

settlement of the karmic debt, and they are like harbingers, they're like ensigns, they're like symbols of your practice, they show you that you're practicing, these minor problems that you have are signs that you're practicing, rather than having like super intense ones, so the more you practice, the more you foreshorten the payment, in other words, you become arhats, not in the sense of arhats like finishing off necessarily, but in a sense of, like somebody said to me at the beginning of the session one time, he said, I just decide, I just sit down and say, okay, let's have it, let's have it, let's get it over with, it's not like, okay, okay, I can take it, no, I don't know if I can take it, let's just give it to me, I'm ready here, this is a good time, give me the results of all my past karma now,

[26:19]

but not really asking for it exactly, but just being present, sort of opening up to it and get it over with, but that's the attitude, I think, of the Buddha too, when the Buddha sat down in the boat tree, it's kind of like, okay, let's get it over with, let's give it to me, I'm not moving anyway until we finish this thing, so come on, so he got this tremendous assault, that was his karmic consequences that he got, tremendous assault, that was his burning out, his karma, that pain, that threat, that fear, those twisting, turning, provocative things that happened to him, that made him want, that sort of said, you think you're going to not react to this karmically, and he didn't react to it karmically, and it all burned off, and he became an arhat, however, his arhatship, in some sense you could say his arhatship in some sense happened early in the night, but he didn't attain complete

[27:24]

enlightenment until later, but anyway, arhats, their spiritual understanding in some ways is equal to Buddha, and in order to be an arhat, we have to test our uprightness, test our non-diluted response to things, test our not meddling with karmic consequences, test it by karmic consequences being offered to us, and the more you practice, then the more you'll be given karmic consequences, and really bad ones, you know, okay, really bad suffering, well then you know it's really bad suffering, and when suffering gets really bad, usually people shut up, and say, okay, here it is, let's relax, it's the minor ones that we sometimes quibble with, think, you know, I don't have to be, I don't have to sit here for this, right, isn't that the expression, I don't have to take this, that's what we say about the little things, we don't say that about when a boulder squashes us, we just

[28:27]

go, we just say splat, you know, but then, you know, but when it's a small thing, like I always say, you know, the thing I have trouble with is when long distance operators aren't helpful, I don't have to, I don't have to put up with this, in other words, I can trash a long distance operator, right, yeah, and maybe they deserve it, well, they truly, in some sense they deserve it, but in our sense, it's so, well, you know, practice is really working if those are your problems, if that's the kind of problems you have, you're extremely lucky, and you're not lucky by accident, because all of us have done things that will ripen into more than some unhelpful long distance operator. So karma does mature, but if you practice it, it matures sooner, and when things mature

[29:28]

sooner, they are easier to handle, and this applies to your daily life, if something happens between you and somebody, some difficulty, it's better to mature it right then, if possible, not to wait till tomorrow to talk about it, but again, mature it not by, hey, wait a minute, I got to mature this, no, mature it by staying present and being upright and saying, I got a problem with that, you know, that was painful, not punishing them, just uprightly saying, this is difficult, this is hard for me right now, in other words, you experience the difficulty right now, and this difficulty is a karmic consequence of the way you understood what just happened. And that was my parenthetical remark the other day about the ringing in the ears that I told you about, hearing it again now, when I was a kid, starting around the time I was eight,

[30:28]

it was kind of like the dawning of my kind of what I would call religious consciousness around eight, I used to sit in my room quite a bit, I had my own room, really nice room, it was on the second story and had windows on three sides, and I used to spend a lot of time there by myself, as a matter of fact, my parents took me to an ear doctor because they thought maybe I was going deaf, because I would just, you know, it's like I was autistic or something, sitting in my room, had my ears tested, but it wasn't my ears, so then they sent me to a psychiatrist, and I was thinking about just the other day, you know, I went to see the psychiatrist and his name was Dr. Hansen, and at the beginning of each session he would say, is there anything you want to talk about, and I would say, no, and then we would build something, like we built aircraft carriers, airplanes, castles and forts, built all this neat stuff and I got to take it home, and now I get to take the stuff home, but

[31:31]

I could make it much better with his help than I could make by myself, he was pretty skillful, so between the two of us we could make these really nice things, you know, so I loved to go see Dr. Hansen, and at the end of the session he would say, is there anything you want to talk about, and I'd say, no, and then once a month all the crazy kids were called together and we had a party at the hospital, and they would like give us cake and ice cream, and we played, what do you call, old maid, and at puppet shows, it was a great deal, anyway after about six months, I actually loved to go see Dr. Hansen, but then springtime came and then we started playing soccer, so I gave up Dr. Hansen for soccer, I really liked to play soccer, but I guess also Dr. Hansen didn't think I needed to keep seeing him, so then my parents went to see Dr. Hansen, so apparently that was more to the point, they never did, I don't think they didn't get the bills done, I don't know, they didn't have as much time as I did,

[32:38]

but anyway, at that time in my life I was starting to think about things, like at night I would think, if Jesus appeared in the mid-air outside my room, would I walk to meet him out there, I'd say, come on, come on, would I walk, I always wondered would I walk, and I was thinking all the time about my parents dying and stuff like that, so it was a real kind of like awakening time, around that time I also had this ringing in my ear, which wasn't a ringing, like a ringing from ringing, like the kind of ringing you sometimes get in your ear, it's not from outside, but it's like you can go like this and it goes away, that kind, I tried to do that, it wouldn't go away, it was a ringing in my ear, but it wasn't in my ear, it was in my heart or something, and I couldn't figure out what it was, and it came every now and then for about five years, I think about five years, and when I was 13 I figured out what it was, what it was, it was like, what is it called, it's a minor kind of like fruition of a certain kind of event that happened during the day, and what it usually was, it's like if some kid would be nicer to another kid than me,

[33:43]

or some teacher would be nicer to another kid than me, or if somebody would like, you know, make a mean face at me, something like that, some of these minor things that annoy you during the day that you just let go, you know, you don't talk to the person, you don't even, you don't tell anybody about it, you don't care, you don't think, you don't go feeling like going down this, you don't go, you don't go saying, well they did this bad thing, but you go away from them, from the thing feeling bad, but not really knowing that you feel bad, it just kind of like makes, you come home from school and your mom says, how was school, and you say, fine, and you said, something was wrong, something went wrong at school today, what was it, and then this ringing would happen, and if I found out, that when I found out, when I remembered the thing, the ringing went away like that, that the ringing was an experience that I didn't experience, not the ringing, the ringing said, something happened today, and it's, you're carrying it, and it's annoying you, and if you would just remember it, it would drop, so it was some selfish thing, right, from my point of view, some self, something happened, I interpreted it self-centeredly, but it wasn't big enough to tell my mother or father, to

[34:48]

tell all my friends, or to go to the teacher, or even like articulate, boy, that was really bad, wasn't that bad, you know, so you don't, so then it hangs on you, and there was something kind of like, something in my, before I found this out, I thought, what I thought it was, what I thought the ringing was, was my conscience, so maybe this is my conscience, you know, maybe this is, you know, Jesus or something telling me, you did something wrong, in a way, it was my conscience, but it was my conscience about these little things that were too small to feel like, that I had to confess, it didn't seem like an action usually, but it was an interpretation, and as soon as I remember it, it would drop, so that's like, if you can handle these things soon, they're over, samsara is moving forward, folks, it's administering its rewards and punishments, you know, it's going ahead, if we can experience them, we can go ahead, too, if we don't experience this thing, this backlog, and this stuff gets heavier, and heavier, and heavier, by the way, the other, same applies to good things

[35:53]

maturing, same kind of applies to good things maturing, foreshortening is better, okay, so let's see, what else about karma, I want to say now, yes, good things would, good things that they matured later would be better, to get liberated from them, otherwise you're waiting for, you know, you're waiting for heaven, or, you know, waiting for, like, if you're the banker, you know, you want them to, you know, if you've been putting your money in good karma, you maybe want to build up as much positive interest as you can, and good karma gets stronger and stronger the longer it goes, but if you, if you're concerned about that, you're not being upright, so your liberation is postponed while you're waiting for, you know, for the payoff, so that's part of it, you have to give up, of course, people don't mind too much giving, wouldn't mind too much giving up the bad karmic results that are coming, right, but

[36:58]

to give up the good karmic results that are coming, people might have trouble with that, so to, to be upright invites both of them to be, to be realized, it's just that then to be, when the good ones arrive, when you invite by your upright, your uprightness is your invitation, you don't say, come on, come on, your uprightness is the invitation, all right, the karmic machinery reads an upright being as making an invitation to foreclose, not foreclose, to foreshorten and close the account, that's the, that's the signal to the universe that you're ready to enter nirvana, your uprightness, so then it can say, okay, you really want it, here it is, so the negative things are kind of like, you know, and the positive things are, oh, come on, come on, this is really good, you're the, you're the queen, here she comes, you know, this is like, you are finally the king and queen, that's the good ones coming, that test, that tests your upright, they both, the positive and negative both test your upright, so you're upright, the good and the bad come to, to be fulfilled, which is also a continued, a further

[38:02]

test of whether you're ready for liberation, big time, not just pre-mantra, but finishing it all off, so the positive things come, can you, can you, can you stand it, so a lot of, actually a lot of, a lot of stories in Zen practice anyway are about the monks who are exposed to the foreshortening of the negative karma as part of religious training, you know, hard training, painful training, and there they learn how to be upright in the face of the maturing of, of negative karma, you know, teachers, you know, beating you up and stuff like that, right, fellow students giving you funny looks, whatever, and some, but some monks then leave the monastery and go, there's some stories of where they left the monastery and they go to the city, and then there is, as a result of their karma, great, you know, wealthy, gorgeous people start coming at them, you know, people would leave the mountains around Kyoto and go down into the capital and, and then all this beauty and wealth

[39:06]

and gorgeousness would come towards them, and then they would find that they weren't, they didn't know how to be upright with that, go back to the monastery for more training because they're not ready for that, they're not ready to be an arhat yet, they need more training, then, then the stuff comes. So, in some ways, this is just, you know, talk, right, in some ways the universe, when you're upright, the universe brings itself to you in both your, your positive and negative karma coming to fruit in your face, and you may be, you may be good at the negative but not good at the positive, so in a positive, it says, oh, she's not ready, goes back, we'll come back later, you practice more, you get upright again, comes back, if you're really upright, it says, hey, maybe they want to finish it off in this lifetime, maybe he wants, maybe now is the time for an arhat, I mean, like, actually, one interpretation of arhat is burn it out, I mean, that, that's the etymological meaning of arhat, is burn it out, burn out the karma, and then there's this interaction between arhat and bodhisattva, so it is

[40:09]

possible, maybe, for a bodhisattva to attain arhatship and still have, by the power of vow, even though karma has, has been used up, and they're no longer, like, hanging out to watch their kid graduate from high school, or whatever it is that they want to see, they're no longer hanging out to get the good stuff, and also they're no longer running away from the bad stuff, in fact, they're an arhat, but their bodhisattva vow takes them into another birth, so you don't have, you don't have to depend on karmic residual to propel you into rebirth as a bodhisattva, that's the part of the theory that I propose, and so that's, that, this is, this is a superficial story, right, I haven't got into the root, this is a superficial story of some, of the workings of karma, this is like the writing, okay, this is the seal on that, this is, this is how, when you put a seal of self separate from other on the universe, then karma works this way, and in Asia, they don't lean so heavily on people to

[41:12]

accept or deal with, okay, can I use the word accept, accept the teaching of rebirth, okay, accept the teaching of rebirth, I would say means take it in, take it in through your mouth, chew it up, digest it, have it become part of your body, accept the teaching, doesn't mean believe the teaching, doesn't mean put it on a shelf and say that's true, it means take it in and use it, and work it, use it for your practice, use it for your practice discussions, you know, that's what it means for me to receive the teaching, and I think people in Asia, there was not so much a problem of teaching, having them accept the teaching of rebirth, so if you read Buddhist texts, it doesn't say, the most troubled, the most miserable people are those who don't, don't receive or believe in rebirth, that isn't what they say, because they usually did take it in and work with it, they couldn't avoid it, which is part of the culture, right, it's like taking in a language, but karma, they usually say, the most terrible thing is a person who doesn't accept karma, and there's a lot of people like that, who don't accept the

[42:12]

teaching of karma, don't accept, teaching of cause and effect, of course, is the most central thing to accept and work with, we have to accept this basic law of karma, and again, the law of karma is not reality of interdependence, it is a seal, it is writing on top of the law of the truth of interdependence, but once it's written, once you put the seal down, you got to accept consequences, and these consequences are, then there is a reality to the consequences of the action of writing on to what there is, where there was originally no writing, writing self, other, and then a slash between, you know, good, bad, hate, you know, love, writing the stuff on there, once you write it, and then play with it, and act it, and theatricalize it, you got that, then that's karma, and it works a certain way, it's illusion, but it hurts, and we have to deal with it, okay, that's the level I'm

[43:15]

talking about, level of writing on top of interdependence, and the teaching of rebirth is an aspect of this fundamental thing, in that cause and effect, of course, physicists are working with it, everybody's working with it, it's universal, cause and effect is universal, then within cause and effect, there's the sub-universe of the cause and effect within sentient life, and in there, the way you negotiate and respond to things, that's the cause and effect of karma, the way you willfully respond to what happens, the way living beings willfully respond, then that goes according to certain laws, and the laws I just told you, and the source of this writing, or this ceiling on top of interdependence, is delusion, delusion itself is not karmic, it's just a way of misunderstanding what's happening, so let's see, some other topics I want to talk about, so many topics, oh, I just want to say, I think I

[44:26]

just get this out of my system, and that is that Dogen Zenju wrote a text called Doshin, Waymind, and I'll read it to you, maybe not right now, but I'll read it to you, and it's a story about how, his recommendation of what to do as you approach death, and then as you're dying, and then in an intermediate existence, which is Tibetan, it's called bardo, Sanskrit is antarabhava, and then as you're being born, and then born, and then in the next life, and then death, so he talks about, very simply, how to go through birth and death, in that classical, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, talks about the same cycle, and basically gives the same instructions, except that they go into detail, about what you see, at that time, and Dogen Zenju's basic instruction about how to go into death, intermediate existence, conception, and delivery in life,

[45:29]

basically the same practice goes through the whole process, and that is, take refuge in the triple treasure. But the Tibetan Book of the Dead says basically the same thing, it just says, when you see this, take refuge in the triple treasure, when you see that, take refuge in the triple treasure, when you see this, same instruction basically, but more detailed, and I would say, just in short, the main difference between, the reason why Zen is so essentialist, and pure, I'd say, in its delivery of the same message, is that we don't verify it. Our training system isn't based on that, and the authority of the training system isn't based on that, so we don't have to prove, literally, that this person is a baby Suzuki Roshi. We don't have to do that. This is a baby Suzuki Roshi somewhere, I guess, but the Zen training system is not based on finding him, identifying him, and giving him good education, and then say, not only is he Suzuki Roshi, not only has he been well-trained, not only is he cute, not only is he a wonderful person, but he's also Suzuki Roshi, on top of that.

[46:42]

And so that system is saying, this person has been given a very good training since a young age, can't you see how nice they are? And they usually are. Can't you see how beautiful they are? Yes. And not only that, but they're so-and-so too, and also they were so-and-so before that. So it really gives a lot of... the system works that way, so that's why they want to describe the situation in more detail, but it's basically not that different from what Dogen Zenji says in that fascicle. And the basic spiritual instruction in both texts is basically the same. Take refuge in Triple Treasure, that's the same for all Buddhists. No one disagrees with that. Except for those who are attached to taking refuge in Triple Treasure, then the Zen teacher will say, don't be attached to taking refuge in Triple Treasure. That's not what it means to take refuge in Triple Treasure, it doesn't mean to attach to it. And if you take refuge in Triple Treasure without attaching to it, then you'll be able to go through birth and death smoothly, but if you attach to it, that's going to make it difficult for you to take refuge in what's going to come, because it ain't going to be what you're attached to.

[47:49]

That's on the way out. What was the name of that fascicle again? Doshin. It's been translated, I guess, by me. For some reason, I don't know what the reason is, it's not in any of the translations. And people say, how come Zen never talks about rebirth and intermediate existence and stuff like that? And then, what's the fascicle that wasn't translated? I don't know how that happened. Anyway, I've got it, I'll read it to you. Okay, so now, I'll just say the next level I'll do is I'll go down now to the root level, to the root of the karma. Now, this is the level of superficial, illusory world, or seal of self and other, the world where seal of self and others place one's situation.

[48:53]

Can you see that world? This is what I've got here, all these little selves who are other than you and other than themselves, we all agree on that, right? This is the world. Now, that's the world of karma, but that doesn't mean that nirvana can't be in this world of karma. So, you can bring nirvana into the world of karma if you can continue to be upright and be undiluted about the way you handle the world of delusion. Which is again, kind of a Zen tilt on the thing. I also would like to talk about, without causing a stampede, the meritorious effects of receiving the precepts. Especially of shaving your head. But that'll be later. Just as I'm leaving. But most people, I think the majority of people here have already received the precepts, so it probably won't cause too big a stampede.

[49:57]

But I'd like to talk about that, the karmic effect of karmically taking refuge. And also the non-karmic effect of taking refuge, non-karmically. So now is the time when I think that's enough presentation. Is that enough presentation? Huh? No? Yes? You said the karmic results are in three times. They happen in this life, okay? If you enact the dream of self and other and act from that place in this life, there will be results which happen in this life. Like, you know, if you say something rude to somebody, in a sense the karmic result that they'll say, you know, I hate you. Or that they punch you, or that they stay away from you, or that they fire you, or that they, you know, whatever. That's something you can see right in this life, right?

[50:59]

Or sometimes another karmic result you can see in this life is you're cruel to people and you feel terrible, right? Or you judge people and you feel terrible. All these things are results of things you do and think and say and do with your body in this life. You rob a bank, you go to jail, or you get shot, or whatever, you know. Or your whole family gets shot, or whatever, you know. These are things that can happen to you in this life. And the things that happen in the short term are not as bad as the long term things, all right? The things you do in this life cannot be that bad. You cannot get as bad. But bad things can happen in this life, but they're coming from past lives. That's why the minor obnoxious things that happen in this life, you can assume since they're coming from past life, they must have a lot of momentum on them, and they would be really bad. So if they're not really bad, probably just say, Thank you. Thank you. These are my problems. Thank you. Thank you. Yes? Oh, excuse me. I didn't finish answering the first question. The next one is in the next lifetime.

[52:00]

That's the second one. And the next type, the third type of karmic retribution, is in the second, third, fourth, up to infinite lives. So is this second retribution just something that's... No. Some acts have all three types. Those are the good ones. Some acts mature in this life, only have one type. Some acts mature in the next life. And some acts mature in later lives, and some acts mature in many later lives. Many. Up to infinite. Depending on dependent co-arising, depending on the way the universe works. This is a cosmic thing, right? We are cosmically endowed as living beings to be able to do wholesome and unwholesome things. In other words, to do things which produce negative results for us, negative responses for us, or to do things which produce positive responses for us.

[53:05]

We're hooked into the universe in that way. That we can do, that we can act, that we can... Out of our delusion, out of our delusion, we can do things which bring positive results to us by that delusion, or negative results to us. That's part of the cosmic process. And part of it also is that the cosmos will vibrate with us indefinitely on some things, some things it'll respond to right away, and that'll be it. Okay? That make sense? So those are three types. Three types of response from the cosmos to living beings' delusional expression, in terms of thought, speech, and action. These are three ways we express ourselves based on our delusions, that we're separate. The three ways we give the universe the finger and say, I'm independent of you. And then the universe responds to us in over three time periods in basically three ways. It says, that was a nice finger you gave us, thank you. We appreciate that. This is the finger of saying, I'm separate from you, but I honor you, dear universe.

[54:09]

Thank you very much. Or, I hate you, I don't appreciate you, I don't need you. And then there's also intermediate ones. Okay? Yes? Question inaudible The way, my understanding of that is that karma is always based on the idea of an independent self. Okay? And, that's my understanding. If you're in a group, you know, people are doing something, you still are thinking of the group in terms of self with the group. Now, if you forget about your individual self and now identify with the group as a self, that's still an individual self. It's always operating on the basis of a self, separate from the other. There is what's called environmental karma, but I think what they mean by that is environmental effect.

[55:15]

Environmental impact. So, the physical world, the nature of the physical world, for example, the mountains and the sky and so on, that is the result of everybody's individual karma, the sum total of everybody's individual karma, and that's what's called the container world. We all share, we all live in a world that only has five physical attributes for us. We all live in that same world. And the way it's manifesting, we share. So, the world we live in, the physical world we live in, comes in things that we call colors, sounds, smells, tangibles, and tastes. We have no other way to experience physical reality than those. We share that. And also, we not only share it as our potential modes of experience,

[56:21]

but we also share what the current one is with other people who are nearby us. So, we all can look at the mountain and see the mountain. So, the physical presentations, although we take it from different angles, we share that. And that is the group karmic result, which is called environmental impact statement. However, our individual actions, things we think we do for ourselves, the results we get from them vary according to other selfish concerns we have. So, for example, we are very concerned with our offspring as human animals. We're very concerned with our offspring. So, if we do an unwholesome thing, a non-virtuous thing, an unskillful thing,

[57:24]

one of the main results of that which count for us is what happens to our offspring. So, that's part of the delayed effect of karma. Some things you do will hurt your children, and your children's children, and your children's children, and your children's children. This is something which means a lot to us. That our children would be benefited or our children would not be benefited has a big impact on our sense of life. Big impact. So, in that sense, what you do will affect your family, because your family is what you care about. So, every action you do, you always care about what happens to your children, particularly your children you care about. And it has to do with your children rather than your children's. It's not so much for the children affecting the parents. That's more like an example of something you do in this life which hurts your parents in this life. But the other one is more like what will happen to your children later.

[58:27]

Will this help your children and your children's children? So, this is part of... But we don't do karma as a group. However, we do actually, in reality, do enlightenment as a group. So, the way we actually are working together as a group, that way of understanding life and acting from there, that's not karma. It doesn't have karmic results. That's called happiness. That's my understanding. Okay, Carolina? That's what I think. I don't know who is next. I see Memphis right there. Takes on karma? What do you mean takes on karma? Takes on somebody's bad karma. I've never heard of that. Did you hear about that someplace? No.

[59:27]

Where? Where did you hear that? In Tibetan Buddhist texts. Show me the text. I've never heard of it. You can't take on other people's karma. There's a practice of Tonglen of taking on other people's suffering. You don't take on their suffering. You just want to take on their suffering. Wanting to take on other people's suffering doesn't take on their suffering. It changes your heart. It purifies you of your concern or my concern for my own pleasure. Now, if you do that practice, and then any kind of merit that is accrued in this practice or any other practice I do, I give that back to people. This practice purifies my heart. When my heart is purified, this will be helpful to other people. But it doesn't take their karma. It would rather show them an example of how to deal with their karma. Nobody can take away anybody's karma. That's the law of karma. Otherwise, why didn't Buddha take away our karma? Why not? Or Christ take away our sins.

[60:29]

Yeah, that's not the thing. Christ saved us from our sins, didn't take them away. How did Christ save us from our sins? By showing us a practice, I guess. What's the practice? Being upright, right? Isn't that Christ's practice? Well, I don't know. Did he have a different practice from that? Tell me, I don't know. That's what I thought his practice was. And being upright, part of being upright is... and tonglen is a practice to aid you being upright. If you're still clinging and you don't want to be upright, you practice tonglen, sort of keep gnawing at yourself, gnawing at your rigidity, gnawing at the place where you don't want to be upright by continually taking in other people's... taking in the darkness and pain of other people. But you can't take away their karma. But you can teach them how to deal with their karma. This saves people, if they follow the lesson. But even Buddha couldn't save everybody because not everybody looked at Buddha's teaching. Even his cousin, instead of getting... instead of watching what Buddha was doing and learning it,

[61:30]

his cousin attacked him, tried to hurt him, tried to kill him, because he was jealous of all the other people who were so happy to receive the teaching of accepting your situation and transforming it through being upright. Okay, Mipham? What's happening? Are you practicing? What is it? How are you practicing? Just that I heard it earlier. I asked you if you're practicing. Is that how you're practicing? How are you practicing? I don't know. I asked you. Tell me. No? You don't want to tell me? I want to tell you. Go ahead. Tell me. I'm sitting here reading.

[62:33]

Okay, good. I think, Bernd and Susan? Well, I'm getting more and more developed on the notion or I would say metaphor of burning out karma. And that is... I don't understand the laws of karma on the level of human psychology. It could make sense for me. But, as you said before, ascension of life itself is kind of a karmic effect. Ascension of life is an effect of karma. It's a big thing. So, on what level... I just don't see on what level the idea of burning out karma could take place. Well, everything... Every time you have any experience, okay? Every experience you have is a result of past action, basically.

[63:37]

Okay? Just try that out. Not everything you do... Things you do aren't necessarily responsive. Things you do are not necessarily a result of past action. You can be free. But most of the things that happen to us are results. Things that happen to us, things that we experience are results. They're called retribution. Every time anything happens, that is a fulfillment of some past action. It burns it up. But us... What you call us right now is not karma itself. No, no. What we call us is delusion. Delusion is not karma. What you call us is delusion. You know, saying us, that might be karma. But, you know, your vision of you, that's delusion. Alright? That's not karma.

[64:40]

That's delusion. And that view that you have of us, or you, or me, that view is the basis of karma. Well, maybe what I'm saying is kind of metaphysical. It refers to the existence of sentient beings. I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying, in the context of sentient life, without getting into philosophical, metaphysical statements about what level of existence this is. I don't know what you're talking about now. Well, but it came out of something you said in the very beginning. It doesn't matter what comes out of it. The question is, what are you saying I don't understand? Do you understand what you're saying? I don't understand what you're saying. I'm not funny, otherwise I wouldn't say it. Oh! So, you only say things when you don't understand? Because then if you do, you're just like me.

[65:43]

I don't understand what you're saying either, so we're the same then. I don't understand what you're saying. Anyway, what I'm saying is what I said. Thinking in terms of us and others, that's delusion. That's the basis of karma. That leads to karmic results. Every time a result happens, in a sense, it's burned up. And a lot of things that happen are happening to us. We're having an opportunity for that thing to be burned up and to experience it, and that to be the end of that. Now, on the other hand, if we then don't respond to that result in an upright fashion, that result is done, but we create more karma and more results. But if we just experience and take in what's happening, experience that and say, OK, it's happening, I accept it as this, that's what we're supposed to do with these things, in terms of being free from them. That response is not karma. And that response doesn't need to be based on self and other. That's just like pain, pain, pain. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. And not like, how can I fix it, how can I make it go away, how can I promote it, how can I demote it?

[66:44]

Just responding into that way will not be the source of further karma and is not further karma. But any meddling with what happens is delusion, or any kind of thinking you can change it or think it should be different, that's delusion, and action will follow from that, which will lead to more results, which will give you more chances to meet those results in an upright fashion, more chances to enact enlightenment, rather than cranking the karmic machine some more. That's what I'm saying. Susan? I think what you just said is basically the answer to my question, which was about, I was confused about how thinking is karmic, because I thought you said you grew up in Zen Do, not creating karmic effects, and I certainly am thinking, but the kind of thinking that you don't meddle with is not, from what you just said, if you just are there and present in thinking, it doesn't have karmic results, whereas if we believe our thinking, that has karmic results. If you believe it, and if there is a you that's believing it,

[67:46]

and if there is a you that's doing it, then it's karma. Thinking is the definition of karma. The basic definition of karma is thinking. That is the definition of a particular karmic act. But thinking that's done wholeheartedly, so wholeheartedly that there's not anybody doing the thinking, is not karma. That's why we say, in that famous example, looking at the Zen teacher, when you're sitting like that, so still, what kind of thinking is going on? He says, thinking of not thinking. In other words, he's thinking so wholeheartedly that it's not karma. But there still is thinking going on. What kind of thinking? This incredibly full-bodied, non-dualistic thinking, where there's not anybody there left over doing it. It's just like the whole universe is thinking, or you are doing the thinking of the whole universe. There's no you in the universe anymore.

[68:48]

This is the universe coming forth as thinking. This is called non-thinking. This is not karma. This is the practice of a Zen master. So, it's ten o'clock, I guess.

[69:02]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ