Before Nagarjuna was concerned that the wonderful practice of the Buddha's disciples, which was able to realize an understanding of ordinary life, as Walter said, as an apparition. as a hollow shell and experience profound radiant liberation from the ordinary world of suffering.

[01:19]

This practice and teaching turns out was not itself presented in such a way that it could withstand being co-opted by the indigenous poisonous tendencies of human nature. So, after the system had done a very good job for a long time, gradually it became reified. The very system of meditation which released people from reifying their experience and making it into something turned out to be reified itself. They still had, these people still were experiencing great liberations, these Buddhist people, these Buddhist monks. But the liberation became something substantial, something real.

[02:21]

Are you following me so far on this? So tell me what I just said, please, somebody. The effectiveness of it was that it was empty? Not quite. The effectiveness of it was that people could realize emptiness. And by realizing emptiness, then what happened? Not quite, you missed something. They realized emptiness and then what happened? They were happy forever after. Because they realized the emptiness of the ordinary situation. And they realized the emptiness of the ordinary situation by meditating on the dependent core arising of samsara. That's called nirvana. That's called realizing nirvana. You realize the emptiness of samsara. Namely, the samsara doesn't have some inherent nature.

[03:24]

therefore you're liberated. But then what happened to you? Well, as I recalled before you said all that, was that then they made their... Then they made what had happened to them into something maybe solid, perhaps a mold, a machine, whatever. So, no one could... They got stuck. Right. It's okay to make it into a goal to be achieved. Nirvana is a goal to be achieved. But they made the goal into... They reified the goal, they reified the... So, they made nirvana into a real, something real. And then there was of course old samsara down here, which they realized was not real.

[04:34]

Right? It wasn't real, it was empty, therefore they got nirvana. Now, turns out that ultimately samsara isn't real, that's correct. And when you understand that really, you get to go to nirvana. And it's really great. to realize that this is not substantial. But then again, the human mind, generation after generation, made this into like, really, this is where it's at, folks. Nirvana is where it's at. This is crappy down here. Now, turns out that you don't have to call samsara crappy in order to realize that it's insubstantial. In fact, that is something of a distraction. Also, you don't have to say it's unreal in order to realize it's unreal. You study it and you'll eventually realize that. And then you get to go to Nirvana. However, if you then let the tendency of mind which made samsara, or ordinary life, into... The thing that makes ordinary life into samsara is we make ordinary life into something substantial, something reified, okay?

[05:49]

That's what makes ordinary life so bad. When you see that that's what makes ordinary life bad, you get to go nirvana. But then, that tendency of mind, which we didn't lose, human beings didn't lose that when they went to nirvana. And the children of the students of these people who went to nirvana didn't lose the neural ability to reify things. So then people reified nirvana. Faith is not going over this again. They all got this now? This is kind of what seems to have happened. Now, of course, the Buddha didn't do that. But one theory is that the world that Buddha was talking to back in the, you know, 500 years before the beginning of the Common Era, the people he was talking to weren't ready to hear the kind of teaching which protects this liberation from reification. The world was not sophisticated enough or hadn't suffered enough.

[06:58]

Needed 500 more years of trouble or something. Civilization had to develop a little further or the teaching to protect against reifying nirvana could be taught. One of the things that happens if you reify nirvana and realize that samsara is insubstantial is then you have this wonderful spiritual goal and the world is separate, right? And then you have a tradition of people who hate the world. They hate the world. During this time, I'm not sure exactly, but during this time, certain kind of world-hating type of stuff started coming off the Buddhist tradition. And even at the time of Buddha, the Buddha said, for example, to his dear disciple Ananda, Ananda was really kind of a cute guy, apparently. Little chubby side. Most of the other monks were a little on the, kind of like, a little bit too lean, you might say.

[07:59]

And he liked girls, and they liked him. So he had a little bit of a problem with the ladies. And so as Buddha was dying, he said, well, now what am I going to do? You're going away. What do I do about the women? He said, well, don't talk to them. Don't think about them. What if I do think about them? Well, don't talk to them. What if I talk to them? Don't look at them. So... He did have a problem, and the Buddha actually recommended that he stay, you know, not get distracted by women. Not that there's anything wrong with women, but for him, they were a distraction for him, right? So he tried to not get distracted by them from his meditation. But then if you look at other Buddhist teachings, that somehow, in order to protect the monks, in the short term, and maybe there was kind of meditations on how obnoxious women are. And they probably had meditations for women about how obnoxious the men are. And then they probably had meditations for homosexuals and how obnoxious they were.

[09:05]

So anyway, this obnoxiousness kind of cold, world-hating style started to develop among Buddhists. And that was not the point of the whole thing in the first place. The whole thing started from Buddha being basically really happy, finally, finding the solution to the world's suffering, and, you know, never thinking that anybody else would be able to understand it, but then people begged him to, so he taught it, and it seemed like he got it where he could teach. He didn't even know he was going to be able to teach. But he was actually an effective teacher, and then he gave all this teaching, and as you know, it had been going on quite a while, he did a good job. But he was really a loving person, very compassionate, And with no idea about what that was, just spontaneously, appropriately compassionate. And compassionate in the most effective way, namely, he gave what would help people be free of suffering. He didn't just sympathize. He also came back with what would help them become free.

[10:07]

Anyway, he was very much... that way with people. And then Buddhism got kind of like, stay away from the people, stay away from the world. And Nagarjuna comes now to take away this duality between liberation and the world, and to reaffirm the fact that Buddhism is about loving all beings and saving all beings. the spirit of saving all beings was there in the life of the Buddha, but it didn't find a home or something. It slipped into a kind of underground for about 500 years in a way. And Nagarjuna is one of the main people for reviving it. And that's also part of his story, you know, that these Nagas, these who had been taking care of these scriptures about universal love under the ocean.

[11:09]

When Nagarjuna appeared, they came out of the ocean and presented him these teachings. They were teachings which somehow weren't appropriate, apparently, around the time after Buddha died, but seemed to be appropriate about 600 years later. What were those creatures called? Nagas? Nagas, yeah. They're like serpents. The green. What does Bhagavad Gita mean? It means one who... Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna means... What does it mean? It means the victor. The victor or the successful one. So, Naga... Arjuna is his name, Naga Arjuna. So it was the one who was successful with the aid of the Nagas.

[12:13]

They gave him this teaching which had been kind of like underground for a while. So you see that that's kind of a story about Nagarjuna's function in the in overall history of Buddhism. And then again, he did this teaching, and it seems like there were some people there who were ready to understand him. He seemed to have had some disciples. And then things started, this whole new... The Mahayana was rejuvenated around that time. And the Prajnaparamita scriptures seem to start come out of the woodwork or up out of the ground or out of the mountains, you know, or the armpits of Garudas or someplace, wherever they were, they started to re-emerge.

[13:15]

And then this big movement started happening that was not just for the world's leading monks, but lay people could also do this practice. Yes? What year was this? Well, we think, you know, that it was the first century of the Common Era, or the second century of the Common Era. Nagarjuna is the second century of the Common Era. Prajnaparamita texts started to appear around, just before the beginning of the Common Era. But part of the Mahayana tradition is that, I don't know, Theravada, has this idea is that there is this thing about teachings being buried or going underground at a certain time and reemerging. And I think the, is it Tartan? Is Diana here? I think they're called tartan.

[14:22]

That's the thing that the Scots people wear. There's a Tibetan tradition of these, of the finders of the Dharma. Right, what's the thing that's hidden, do you know? Something like, sounds like, I forgot the name, something like tartan. It does sound like that. Anyway, there's a word for the thing that's hidden and put aside until a later date, and then there's a word which sounds pretty much like it, which is the name for the person who finds it. So Nagarjuna found this teaching, okay? So, this is a mighty hefty eraser. This eraser has been soaked in water. There's a new dry one over down here, right? This is one of the heaviest erasers out there. Substantial. Ah, here's a light one. So, the Bodhisattva way is... Turtan is the word.

[15:24]

Huh? Turtan. Turtan. Yeah. So, the Bodhisattva way is... Actually, you start down here and you go... The Chinese characters for this are like this. Go up. Go up. And attain. Go up and attain. Come down and transform. This is the Bodhisattva way. You go up and attain nirvana, come down and transform beings. Round and round. Or you can reverse them if you want to. But anyway, the bodhisattvas vow to attain nirvana in order to come down and transform beings. So they have to study the world until they see the dependent co-arising of the world.

[16:29]

And then they go to nirvana. But the power of their vow sends them out of nirvana, back down to the world. And once they see how things depend and co-arise, then they naturally can teach that way. And somehow, I don't know what happened, but somehow this part got kind of obscured. So people... great spiritual adepts in the Buddhist tradition were like going up and staying there. One after another was dropping off into Nirvana. And then they built a church around these people. And then the people down here waiting for these guys and gals to come back were like just... So this thing, then this thing was, you know, which is still somewhat around in the world, is that lay people who can't, like, go to nirvana, they should just support the nirvana people, and then maybe by that, by the merit of supporting them, in the next life they can go up.

[17:48]

It's a little bit different program, right? Just shoot people up to nirvana and then they go into arhatship from there, right? See the picture? Just get people up into this stage and then they they vaporize out of that. And then if you can't go yet, or if you can't practice to go there yet, you just help the others go by supporting the monks, and then you're born as a monk eventually, and then you can go out of there too. But the Bodhisattva... But this doesn't produce Buddhists, it turns out. Because you don't get the experience of coming back down into the sewer and doing that heavy and challenging work of working with people like... Yes? In a non-dualistic system, where did they actually go? Where did who go? Those guys. Where did what guys go? Those guys up there. Where did they go up here to non-dualistic? They weren't anywhere. Where were they? They didn't get reborn anymore. No more rebirth.

[19:02]

They became arhats. They've burned out. Yes? I asked Amal about that with Tassajara, and he said those people leave traces of absence, and that bodhisattva leaves traces of emptiness. so that, like, those guys, they're, like, absent, and the world is left with their traces of absence, where when people come down on the fence, like, traces of emptiness. For some reason, that was really beautiful for me. Are you done, or do you want to talk about that some more? I'll talk about it some more. Anyway, the idea was, even Buddhists said that, you know, that he realized, when he understood the Four Noble Truths, when he understood suffering, understood how it originated and renounced the cause of it, renounced the conditions of it, attained cessation and realized the way, he realized that this would be his last birth.

[20:06]

And it was for him, because he was an arhat. The Buddha retired. Shakyamuni Buddha retired. He wasn't arhat. He went into nirvana and that was it. But other bodhisattvas who haven't yet attained full Buddhahood, they go up here and then they come back. They attain that same understanding but they don't burn out. They vow not to. until other beings go before them. And that vow is what it takes to become a Buddha rather than just an arhat. Turns out the Buddha was an arhat and a Buddha. He kind of grandfathered himself into the Buddha thing and didn't have to stay around. Is that a choice an ordinary mind would make? I mean, when they were up there and said, whoops, no, I'm going to come back. Is that a choice of what? I mean, is it their ordinary mind making that, is it actually in their mind at that point that they're going to come back?

[21:09]

I can't understand why you're so close to extinction that you can actually choose to say... Well, I kind of see it as momentum, that they're kind of like put into orbit by the power of the bodhisattva vow. And then when they hit nirvana, they just sort of temporarily get a feeling for it, maybe sit there for a while just to make sure they're not going to lose it when they go back into, you know, the atmosphere, so they can kind of keep track of it as they get reborn to the atmosphere as a born-new person. The vow forces them out of nirvana back into the world of suffering beings. There I'm actually thinking of it at that time as something substantial, but the power of their real vow pushes them into more work or rebirth, whichever way you want to say it. What you just said about them returning the power of their vow to reenter the secular world and the world of the unenlightened, could that be a metaphor for the short term of exalted states?

[22:22]

I mean, maybe someone just made that up to cover up the fact that these guys could not maintain and no one could maintain Samadhi. Um, Could it be a metaphor for that, you're saying? Yes. Could it be a metaphor for that? It could be, but I don't think it is, because this is not samadhi, this is liberation. And Buddha did not attain liberation in samadhi, in some special samadhi. He was actually in the regular world at that time, looking at objects. He wasn't in some special jhana, although he could do all those practices. But it could be a metaphor for that, but I don't think it is. So now... Yes? Part of the experience of enlightenment is terrific compassion. Pardon? Part of the experience of enlightenment is extraordinary compassion for the world. I can't see how this could not occur.

[23:28]

There's different kinds of enlightenment. There's three kinds of enlightenment. There's several kinds of enlightenment, but there's three mankinds. or two main kinds, he said. There's enlightenment of arhat, which is enough enlightenment to liberate himself. It's real enlightenment. It's called... The knowledge that liberates the arhat is called all sarva, all knowledge. That's the knowledge of the arhat. And that is sufficient to liberate yourself completely. But the bodhisattva path and the buddha path is different. Bodhisattvas have not yet attained complete enlightenment because they're not going to do it until everybody else does.

[24:33]

So while functioning as a bodhisattva, you have this level of understanding, but you have another level of understanding called Bodhisattvas have knowledge of all the paths of all beings. Not necessarily right away, but they want to develop understanding of how, one of the paths of liberation is of all beings. And then the Buddhists, they also have this level of understanding. And the Buddhists have sarva akhara. In other words, they have this this level of understanding, what it would take to be personally liberated.

[25:37]

Bodhisattvas have the understanding of how they would be personally liberated, plus they also develop the understanding of the path for all the beings to be personally liberated. The Buddhas understand these two, plus all aspects and all different points of view on each one of these. In other words, they're totally omniscient. This is the Buddha's knowledge, and this knowledge is these two have tons of compassion in them. This first one is not necessarily compassionate, although in Arhat, If you see an arhat walking around, they're going to be a pretty nice person. And if you wanted them to teach dharma to you, I'm sure they would. They'd be a very compassionate person, but their compassion is not comparable to the bodhisattva who was not going to turn the little switch to attain personal liberation. They're going to postpone that until other people are ready to do that. Arhat supposedly turned that switch. But they're still, of course, quite kind people, and they're not going to ever hurt an ant.

[26:40]

Definitely not. They're very kind, harmless beings, but they do not yet develop skill and means. The Bodhisattva's vow to be kind of like learn every possible musical instrument well. Learn all sciences and technologies in an ordinary sense. learn all kinds of spiritual techniques and technologies. And also, vow to forget them all, if that would be helpful too. In other words, they take on all possible paths that would be helpful to learn them all. That's the kind of compassion, infinite compassion. And when that comes to fruit, you have Buddha. And the fruit of the Bodhisattva is the fruit that all the beings are realized. So then at that point, we have another Buddha. But the last two have great compassion. I would say the compassion of an arhat is not... Arhats have compassion, there's no question about it. But they don't have great compassion.

[27:44]

And that's the difference. If you look, the arhats meditate on compassion. But it doesn't say great compassion. Just compassion, equanimity, you know, sympathetic joy and loving kindness. They do those meditations and they realize them. That's the way they are. But they don't have this universal, everybody else before me compassion. They actually have me before them. These people are not ready to go, but I am. See you later. It's a different kind of a thing. Of course, another theory is that when you actually get to Arhatship, you say, Oh, shucks. I'm not going to go. I'm going to be a boy soon. It's actually... Now, I mean, if it occurs to you, you think, I think my voice is actually better for me, because I don't want to go ahead of these people after all, even though I can. So then some people would say you naturally would spill over into voice opera, and then develop great compassion, and great sympathetic joy, great loving kindness, and great equanimity, which great means for all beings with all beings, right?

[28:53]

Does that make sense? I think she was next. I'm not sure. Were you? I think so. All right, go ahead. I don't know. You have a diagram that you go, or not you, but one goes up. and then it comes down to transform, and I was wondering how transforming or the commitment to transform is related to the meddling that we've been talking about? You're wondering how... The commitment to transform The down part? What has to do with meddling? Right. And was there back then, was it acknowledged that was meddling even an issue back then?

[30:06]

They didn't have, they had not yet, the English word meddling had not yet been invented. But bodhisattvas never have been meddlers. And if you say, well, what about kind of people who would like to be bodhisattvas? Well, those people have never been meddlers. But if you say bodhisattvas as those people who have actually like, if you have kind of like what you call it, a kind of like, what would you say, a requirement to be a bodhisattva rather than just thinking about it, Sometimes they speak of bodhisattvas as someone who has actually done quite a bit of work, as someone who actually has given rise to the actual thought of enlightenment. Okay. These beings really want to help all other people in the highest possible way and understand what that means before themselves.

[31:08]

These people are into not meddling. And the vow of coming down and transforming beings, you don't transform beings by meddling with them. They transform beings by demonstrating Dharma. If you demonstrate Dharma and people see the Dharma, then they're transformed. Meddling is demonstrating meddling. And there's a Dharma there, but it's not regular Buddha Dharma to meddle with people. It's kind of disrespectful to meddle with people. It's also kind of disrespectful to meddle with yourself. Okay? So coming down and transforming is not meddling with people. It's hanging out with them with great love, sympathetic joy. In other words, you appreciate them. You don't think, oh, these people are kind of defective...

[32:09]

I mean, of course, you could think that, but that's not great sympathetic joy. Great sympathetic joy is you look at people and you see how great they are, and you also realize that if they do have problems, you realize this person has these 17 problems. And you might have like 17 courses of study to address those 17 problems, and you might inquire of them if they come and ask, For Dharma, you might ask them, would you like to start this 17-phase course? Which I just happen to have right here for you. And you talk to them about it and say, okay, and then you teach it. This is not meddling, okay? So, in coming here... In your coming here? In people's coming here... Missed a chance there.

[33:12]

Always missed a chance. The way that I've heard people talk about Green Gulch and sort of the way I felt about it was that no one was going to invite me there. or taste my fear, but that if I was here, then people would teach me, if I was sort of looking at them and asking them to. And I was wondering if it was the same back then, that part of not meddling was just sort of being there, and if people wanted to talk and learn. That was what happened, and if If they didn't know. Well, I would say, if you look at the Buddha, the Buddha was like, you know, he was, he got this, he became Buddha and he realized that he was Buddha. And then he enjoyed that quite a bit. He sat after he was enlightened in what's called the... What's it called?

[34:16]

The... Sukha Moksha Samadhi. Moksha Sukha Samadhi. He sat in this sweetness of liberation for quite a while. He enjoyed his liberation for quite a while. And then he reviewed the Dependent Core Rising teaching that he liberated himself through. He reviewed that. He did a 49-day review session of his enlightenment. Then he got up and started moving. And he ran into... but he ran into some creatures, some living beings, and they begged him to teach, so he offered to teach. And then at various points in his life, sometimes he didn't offer to teach some people because he felt like they didn't want to be taught. So one of the things that attracted me to Zen is the Zen style that I thought about.

[35:18]

The Zen style that attracted me was the Zen style of a teacher just, you know, working in his garden, or sitting Zazen up in his cave, or making sandals by some roadside intersection. They're just there, doing their practice, and people would walk by, and if they noticed, they would say, hey you, and they'd say, what, and so on. I like that style, that attracted me. But I think once the Buddha realizes that people want or once the bodhisattva people realize that people want teaching, they get the idea, oh, people want teaching and there could be teaching. Once they get that idea, then sometimes they'll walk up to somebody who's not necessarily asking and they'll say, are you okay? They'll actually initiate a conversation with somebody. But they won't teach necessarily other than just concern. Unless in the conversation they realize that the person wants a certain kind of help.

[36:22]

But they may sense this person looks like, you know, like sometimes you may see somebody lying on the street, right? And somehow lying on the street, like in San Francisco with cars going by or walking by and stuff, sometimes you think there may be a request in this. So you go up to the person and you might, I would suggest, you know, usually you go up and you say, I'm not going to suggest it, but anyway, what I usually do is I would ask them how they're doing or if they need any help. And I've done that sometimes and they say, no, thank you, fine. But some people might say, yeah, I'm really, are you a priest? Would you pray for me? Sometimes they'll tell you right away what they want. So sometimes you wait, sometimes you go up. Once you understand that people, generally speaking, are fairly likely to want some help, then you might go up to them and ask them. But also some people, what they do is they sit in a monastery and they wait for people who come out of their way for it, who walk a long distance for it.

[37:25]

Because some people like to teach in a way that you can teach people who... What do you call it? Some people like to teach people who weren't particularly interested, but if you ask them, they are. Other people like to teach the kind of teaching which most people are not interested in. And most people will reject. And Zen teaching is that kind of teaching. It's the kind of teaching which is so universal that almost nobody wants it. It's so generous that people think, get suspicious, because they think, well, how come they're... They're not just giving, like, a little help here. They're offering complete Buddhahood? Well, what's the trick, you know? So it's better for people, like, to crawl. You know, what is it Mary Oliver said? You don't have to crawl on your knees 100 miles across the desert. Well, certain teachings... better if you do that first, because by the time you get there, you know, you're ready for something that you don't like, which is exactly what you want after doing that.

[38:29]

So, there's different styles, okay? And Zen Center's not so much like, we don't go to Mill Valley, sorry to say, and say, you know, have these people say, You know, I'm testifying that there's this great guru up in Green Galt, you know, and he saved my life, and now I'm rich and good-looking. And actually, the person is rich and good-looking, right? Wow, and I used to be ugly. You did? Wow. And they have all their hair back. Yeah. You know, I had cancer, and I'm healthy now. Or, you know, I was blind, and he gave me sight back. You know, I just rolled there in Mill Valley, you know, and then over the hill, right over there, let's go. Here's the van. So it makes that stop. Okay? And sometimes it's helpful. I don't like it myself too much. It didn't attract me, but I, you know, I'm just one kind of a person. I like that kind of like sitting up there in the mountains waiting for people to come style and then not turning around when they come.

[39:32]

Yes, Lee? Well, that's authority style practicing skill and meaning. up in the mountains, waiting. That's Bodhidharma, right? Avlaki Teshvara facing the wall for nine years. That's Bodhidharma style. It looks like an arhat. It looks like an arhat who's practicing samadhi. So in the newspaper, people come up and say, oh, let's call it the Zen school. If the Bodhisattva manifest being practiced still in me, it relapses into mental existence. You wonder if they ever laughed? For a second. They meddle. If it ever turns out that meddling would help people, they'll meddle. You see, the archetype, by not putting himself forward in teaching, is allowing people to be generous and help him. That could be a skill in being an archetype.

[40:35]

Bodhisattvas can take the form of arhats. They can appear as arhats, like the Buddha. The Buddha appeared as an arhat. So bodhisattvas, part of their work should be as arhats. So that's part of the overall tour of duty of bodhisattvas, is to be arhats at least a few lifetimes. Yes? In the sutras there are references to these beings that the Buddha calls Pratyekabuddhas. Yes. And it seems like he's referring to beings who have realized the Buddha's realization that they don't teach, they just want. Is that...? No. An Arhat, a Pratyekabuddha, has the same understanding as an Arhat. Pratyeka is related to pragyaya. Pratyaya is conditions. So a Pratyeka Buddha is someone who is enlightened by conditions. In other words, they didn't go to the Buddhist Sangha and get the teaching, Buddhist teaching.

[41:38]

They awoke just by circumstance. And in that sense, they sometimes say that Arhats understand, Pratyeka Buddhists understand a little bit better than Arhats because they do it without even, without even having to receive Buddhist teachings. They're called Pratyekabuddhis, but they're not Buddhas. They're not Buddhas. They're not Buddhas, you say? They're not Buddhas, no. In the sense of, would it have a certain function of being a great teacher? You mean, by having the same realization as? Pardon? Are they different only in the sense of not having that function of being...? No, they're different in the sense that... The stuff I wrote on the board, you know, before... They have Sarvajnana, they have all knowledge for liberating themselves, but they don't understand how to teach other people in all these ways that bodhisattvas have, why they're warming up to be Buddhas. There's three vehicles, right?

[42:40]

They talk about three vehicles, you've heard of those? Shravakayana, pratyekabuddhayana, bodhisattvayana. Those are the three vehicles. Okay, so here we are at the stages, back at the stages. Now we have these 12 stages, all right, or 12 links, or 12 aspects of the process and the teaching of the pinnacle horizon. This teaching can be used in many ways. You can deal with this chart in many ways and for many purposes. Tonight I'd like to point out that these first two, what's this one? Informations. These two are what you might call active karma. These five, consciousness, personality, and mentality, and physicality, the six sense capacities, contact, the feeling, these are retributions.

[44:08]

when you're born as a human. What's it called, the attributions? Yes, that's why. They're not active karmic states. However, you can respond to these karmically if you wish. And for starters, you can respond to each one of these phases, but particularly I was emphasizing the seventh stage during Sashim, and in response to this stage of development, you can respond with the karma of craving. That's active karma. Then, in response to craving, you can respond with clinging. That's active karma. And the response to clinging can respond with becoming.

[45:16]

And becoming can be just two-fold. A kind of passive and a kind of active becoming. So there's karmic becoming, and there's more, in a sense, the resultant becoming. And the resultant becoming is kind of a link to rebirth. The karmic becoming is a condition for rebirth. So then you come into rebirth, and old age, sickness, death, and so on, and these parts, again, retributive. So in terms of this diagram, 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 are active karma. 3 through 7 and 11 and 12 are retricative states.

[46:22]

And the way I'm understanding it now is that 3 through 7 are really an articulation, an expansion of the experience of the retribution of birth and death. that as a result of the karmic force of ignorance, karmic formations, the karmic force of ignorance, karmic formations, craving, clinging, and becoming, that karmic force produces birth and death. However, as part of the presentation of the karmic force, it's like, it's kind of like, it's like, in a sense, these two sections are like the teeth or something, you know? And they need to eat this section here. Or, I eat this section here. In other words, the ignorance and karmic formations, together with craving, clinging, and becoming, you know, interact with birth and death,

[47:37]

to cause more birth and death. Or, in an articulated way, they interact with consciousness, personality, sense fields, contact between the sense fields, and sensation. They act in a karmic way, in an ignorant karmic way, which turns out to be craving, clinging, and becoming. That's the way they work with this material, which then causes more birth and death. and birth and death in an articulate way is made of this kind of stuff. Consciousness, personality, sense and closure of personality, contact between the elements of sensation and experience some pain and pleasure out of that. The pain and pleasure here Example is that in old age, sickness and death, lamentation, grief, despair, depression, anxiety, fear, greed, hate, and delusion, you know, fighting these things.

[48:50]

12 elaborates the negative side of 7. Between 11 and 12, do you have pleasure too? Somewhere in there, right? Yes, Charlie? So can you say our practice lies in 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10? Because that's where... 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10? Yeah, and the rest are just happening. So practice kind of focuses around those. Are you saying our practice happens 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10? Yeah, you know... Did I say our practice happens there? No, actually our practice in the sense of when you're practicing at the level of dualistic practice, okay, in the sense of like what I mentioned to you, deep faith in cause and effect. When you're practicing at that level, when you still have dualistic idea of things, and you still think you're doing karma, and you're still in the realm of ignorance, which means you're probably going to be craving blah, blah, blah.

[50:03]

You can make an effort in this realm to practice here, but you can also practice in this retributive situation and respond to this material in a non-karmic way. In other words, the response to all this, don't move. Don't lean into craving. Just stop right there. When Buddhas are born, you know, they go over here. When Buddhas are born, number 11, they go over to number 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. That's it. Or, you know, the person who's going to be successful as a bodhisattva, you come in, you have a consciousness up to number seven and that's it. Going beyond seven is going into meddling, interfering. Okay?

[51:05]

So those are the moving one, two, eight, nine, ten for meddling. Yeah. 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 is the realm of moving and meddling. However, if in this realm you move and meddle in a relatively wholesome way, your spiritual opportunities develop out of the merit of your wholesome activity in the realm of these karmas, these karmic realms, your karma gets better and better, and you have finally a chance to deal with this material according to the Buddha Dharma, of ultimate practice, of non-dual practice. Then you just stop there, at seven. And you only go into these realms in order to get reborn for the benefit of other people, which you're allowed to do, if necessary. And this is the last class for a while, so I just want to tell you briefly for your information and homework.

[52:07]

that I would say that for this stage, number five, I would say that the meditation that goes with this, traditional Buddhist meditation goes with this, is in Sanskrit the skanda meditation. That wasn't a very pretty S. Skanda. In other words, meditate on the five aggregates of your experience. This is the personality field. This is name and form. Literally, it's really the five skandhas broken up into two parts. So here you meditate on form, feeling, perceptions, impulses, and mental formations and consciousness. You meditate on that. You try to understand, see if you can see your experience in those five varieties. And you will notice... Pardon? Is it on four or five? That's four. Name and form.

[53:10]

I thought you said five. I maybe did. Four. Oh, I did say five. Four is the five skandhas. Five. Okay? The meditation for this four is particularly the five skandhas. Number five meditation is the twelve kayatanas. Number six, the meditation is the 18 dhatus. Okay? And number seven, I would say, for short, is don't move. Just sit upright, total devotion to a mobile sitting. It's a last stop, last gap measure to stop you from plunging into further rebirth, unintentional. He should not be reborn as a bodhisattva except for the welfare of others, which we should do maybe sometime.

[54:17]

Yes, miss, ma'am? Can't you have craving and yet not grasp? Isn't there a weak link between eight and nine? A weak link? We don't have any weak links here. Between things? There's no weak links between things. Aren't you happy to hear that? I'm not sure. There's no strong links either. There's no links between things. Well, how about that? No links between things. Got that? Karaka 1, Chapter 1, Nagarjuna. There's no links between things, people. No links between them. Yes, you want to go on? Okay, so there's no links between them. There's no links between them. If there were links between them, then we would have nine, eight and a half. But aren't the links, at least the twelve links?

[55:21]

Yeah, but there's no links between the links. The links themselves. Yeah, but you said links between, you said a link between them, didn't you? You did. Yes, I did. Okay, so number eight, the link of number eight. The link of number eight, yes. Craving. Craving, yeah. Listen to this. Yes? Can you not be filled with craving and yet not grasp? Can you be filled with craving and yet not grasp? Yes. Can you be filled with craving and yet not grasp? That's what you said? Can you be filled with craving and yet not grasp? Yes, you can be filled with craving and yet not grasp. This whole process can be broken at any point. Any point. Okay? You can break it at any point. How can you break it at any point, ladies and gentlemen? What? What did you say? Don't move. And then when you don't move, what happens then? The don't moving isn't what breaks it. The don't moving isn't what breaks it.

[56:23]

What breaks it? Huh? What happens when you don't move? What happens to you? Liberation. No! Not moving. is the entrance to realizing the pentacle arising. The pentacle arising is what liberates you. The not moving is the entrance into the pentacle arising. All the Buddha ancestors have used sitting upright in correct posture as the authentic entrance into the self-fulfilling samadhi, right? Self-fulfilling samadhi is the awareness of the interdependence of all things.

[57:25]

It's through this immobile sitting that you enter into the Dependent Core Rising. That Dependent Core Rising is what is the vision of liberation. Okay? So, at any point in this process of birth and death, any point in this process of Dependent Core Rising, if you stop moving, you enter into the Dependent Core Rising of the Dependent Core Rising. and you see the pinnacle rising at any point here, seeing you enter the pinnacle rising of birth, you wake up. You enter the pinnacle rising of craving. You see that craving is conditioned by feeling, and feeling is conditioned, and so on. You see that craving is a conditioned for, clinging. You understand that. When you enter that and understand that through not moving here, you wake up. It can be broken any place. However, the Buddha... for your information, did not do that after he was Buddha.

[58:28]

He just spun around up to here and stopped. But before he was Buddha, he went around this thing quite a few times. He checked it out. First of all, he went reverse in terms of dependence. He says, here I am getting old, and so on. And he went, I was born. That came from becoming. He saw how where he was depended on his birth, how his birth depended on becoming, how the becoming depended on... Grasping. Grasping, how grasping depended on... Desire. Desire, how desire depended on... Feeling. Feeling depended on... Contact. Contact depended on... And so I saw that it all worked out here. Then he saw... Then he saw... Then he went forward. He said, he saw how karmic formations developed from ignorance. And he saw how consciousness developed from karmic formations. And he saw how... And so on. He went this way. Then he started this way. And he said, now, if there isn't birth, then there won't be old age and death. And if there isn't becoming, there won't be birth.

[59:30]

And if there isn't grasping, there won't be... Becoming. Okay? Now, Linda said, if there is... If there is cradling, will there be grasping? The answer is not necessarily. But if there is grasping, will there be clinging? Yes. You can't have grasping without clinging. But you can have clinging without grasping. In other words, it doesn't inexorably go forward because there are no links between things. Because these are not causes. You see, that's what Nagarjuna taught you. These are not causes. None of these are causes. Therefore, this process is not written in stone. And all beings are not inherently in prison. We just seem to be in prison. And if you study prison, you'll get up. But if you don't study prison, you will stay in.

[60:32]

Brent. Bernd. Bernd. We can change your name to Brent if you'd like, because that's the name of my new boyfriend. So is each one of these links the Dharma gate? Is each one of these makes a Dharma gate? Yes. And if I sit in one of these gates, totally engaged in the immobile sitting, I eventually realize the pentacle rising. So is it correct understanding that it doesn't matter Which make you choose? Is it correct understanding to say it doesn't matter which one you choose? No, that's not correct understanding. So now you know that. May you ask why?

[61:39]

Would you please not? How? How? I say it differently. May I say it differently? I'll just tell you the right answer. Whatever stage you're in, it's not that it doesn't matter what stage you're in. Okay? What matters is that you use the stage you're in. That's what I mean. Why didn't you say that? It does matter what stage you're in. It doesn't matter which one you use. You should always use the one you're in. That's what you should. You should definitely... It doesn't matter which one you use. You should always use this one. Okay? If you use this one... you'll be liberated on the spot, if you use it completely. These are not, you know, the thing is, these are not inherently existing things. They all depend on each other. None of these can happen without the other ones. If any of these things were missing, the Buddha sometimes taught a simpler version of this, that wasn't that the links were, like, removed from the process, he just didn't mention it.

[62:48]

You can't take anything out of independent horizons. So, whatever place you are includes all the other ones. You always can practice, no matter what state you're in. However, it is more difficult to practice in some states than others. And it's recommended that you try to practice when you're not, you know, craving very strongly. It's easier. But if you're craving, and practically craving, like we say, you know, should you smoke during Zazen? Hmm? For all practical purposes, no. But should you practice zazen when you're smoking? Yeah? Definitely. Definitely, yeah. Please. Just practice zazen when you're smoking. Is that a request? Yes. In other words, always practice zazen if you can, but...

[63:50]

Don't, if possible, don't add anything like smoking or twiddling your thumbs to zazen. Don't do that. But if you're twiddling your thumbs, practice zazen. Zazen doesn't need any other stuff, you know, because you've already got something there to work with. Work with that. Okay? Does that answer your question? Yes. You're welcome. Yes? Is there a sense in this, in the realization of... of not born, not caused, not moving, in which when you move forward, that's when you're born, that's when birth occurs. When you move forward, basically, that's craving. That doesn't cause birth. Then you've got to clang and become in order for the birth to happen. But sometimes you could have a short course, and the short course is suffering.

[64:56]

And by the way, some books I have read, quote, you know, translate the Buddha's teaching as, the Buddha says, I see suffering and I saw the cause of suffering. Or I was suffering and I asked myself, what is the cause of suffering? They sometimes translate it as cause suffering. Other translations of the same scripture say, what was the condition of my suffering? I mentioned that in the translation of Buddha's text sometimes they say cause instead of condition, even though it actually is correctly translated as condition. But sometimes the Buddha was not necessarily so systematic and sometimes he said cause. Nagarjuna is saying he never meant cause. But sometimes anyway he said cause. Suffering, which means birth, old age and death. That's where suffering occurs. But also pleasure occurs in those realms too. But again, pleasure occurs, but you're miserable when you have pleasure because you're scared and anxious you're going to lose it.

[66:00]

So in the realm of samsara, everything is suffering, he's saying. As long as there's delusion in the background, you're suffering. That's the first truth. The second truth is there's an accumulation of this suffering. It accumulates, it arises, it originates. And how does it originate? Sometimes he said right away, craving. So sometimes he talks about suffering, which could be 11 and 12 or 3 through 7. Because you can't have just plain old suffering, you've got to have contact and sense doors and personality to have suffering, right? So you need all five of those to have suffering. So, you've got suffering, that's the first truth, which is, the first truth is, in the realm of three through seven, and one to eleven and twelve, there's suffering all the time. What's the condition for that? Sometimes it goes right to number eight. But that doesn't mean that number eight can skip over the other two facets.

[67:03]

It has to go through those other phases to realize itself. Just craving isn't enough. Turns out you got to cling and grasp too. And even clinging isn't enough. You got to like really fully cling. That's the becoming. The fulfillment, the fullness of your clinging is the becoming. I'm going to keep working on this stuff until there's a huge mass of understanding. And it's pretty clear that it's no longer necessary to talk about this stuff. So I'll probably be teaching this stuff for the next few years. I'm saying that to myself and to you. I'm saying it to me to say, you can stop the class now, Reb. It's okay. This isn't your last chance. You can be reborn many, many times to do this teaching. So don't worry that you haven't covered it all tonight. But I will tell you this. Although I haven't covered it tonight or during this practice period, I'm very happy at the prospect of continuing to study this with you.

[68:12]

It's really wonderful teaching, this dependent core rising. I think. So I'm not at all, you know, done studying this myself. The more I study, the more I think, oh my God, oh my God. It's so subtle, you know. All these little aspects, you know. So I hope somebody else studies with me so that I will be encouraged to keep reading all these wonderful texts, which you... know a lot now because you have the reading list, right? Of those like 30 books or whatever. So good luck in your studies of this material. Yes? So Nagarjuna was saying that Buddha didn't say cause or condition of suffering. He said origination and arising. No, Buddha did say [...] Depending, what did he say?

[69:18]

Depending on this, depending on this, that arises. Depending on this, that arises. He said that. You know, he didn't say it in Sanskrit, but he did say that, it looks like. Depending on this, that arises. That is the definition of a condition. Depending on this, that arises. Not, this is caused by that. He didn't say that. He didn't say ignorance causes karmic formations. He said karmic formations, depending on ignorance, karmic formations arise. Avijja, pratyaya, samskara, uttara. Depending on ignorance, karmic formations arise. Depending on karmic formations arise. consciousness arises. That's what he said. He didn't say consciousness causes personality.

[70:18]

He didn't say karma formations cause consciousness. He didn't say ignorance causes karma formations. He said, depending on ignorance, karma formations arise. Therefore, karma formations are empty because they depend on something. But also, ignorance is empty because things depend on it. All these things are empty, therefore liberation is possible. All these things are empty, therefore practice is possible. Pat? Do you think inquiry is always sort of like an antidote for kind of formations? Do I think it's always an antidote? Yeah. Do you think this impulse inquiry is like trying to kind of move karmic formations? Well, is moving karmic formations an antidote or is moving karmic formations is karmic formations?

[71:21]

Well, so what is... Wondering... So what is inquiry then? Studying karmic formations. Wanting to understand karmic formations is not trying to push them out of the way because if I want to understand you, I don't try to push you out of the way. If I want to understand you, I watch you. Generally speaking, I try to watch you in your natural habitat from a distance. And a distance is not that I'm far away. The distance is I really watch you and don't try to make you into what I want you to be. I try to understand what you're doing. I don't try to push you around and make you into what you should be or what you shouldn't be. I study you. So studying things, studying things, that's not karma. Awareness of karma is not karma. Studying karma is not karma. Trying to improve karma is karma. But I'm talking about this impulse to study. Impulse to study? Yeah. And asking if you think it's like some kind of mystery movement.

[72:30]

Tell me about the impulse to study even more. I don't know, I feel it often. What's it like? What's it like? What do you feel the impulse to study? Karma? Various things, but right now certainly dependent colorized. Okay, so there's an impulse. What is that impulse like? Well, it's captivated, or it's present. It's really present. Well, that's good, but tell me, how is it, besides being present? Can you say more about it? I don't know how to describe it. It's there, and it's arrived. Well, if you find out more, I'm not getting more information, but it's present, it's there, it's arrived. I'd like to hear more about it, if you can tell me more about it.

[73:33]

But anyway, something like that is helpful, I think, in study. If you don't have an impulse to study, how are you going to study? Do you hear the question I'm trying to ask? No, I don't quite understand it. Do you think the impulse to study, or this inquiry impulse, has something to do with melting karmic formations, or... I would say that if you are studying them with the hidden or unhidden agenda of jumping over them or melting them, then that's not what I would call the impulse of inquiry. That is more karmic impulse, that you want to do something with the karma, that you want to spread the Red Sea and walk through it, but that you would like to understand karma. as it is, or as it's coming to be, that's more of an upright attitude towards it. That's more respectful.

[74:38]

Because sometimes we might think, I'd like to get rid of karma, but we don't yet know what it is. So maybe we'd better study it before we can try to get rid of it, because it turns out that if you get rid of karma, you're in much more trouble than being in karma. To be in the photographic negative of karma is worse than being in the photographic positive of karma. So we have to look and see, is there any leaning... Are we leaning forward, backwards, right or left in our interest to study karma? In other words, the way of studying karma should be selfless, which is what I mean by not moving. And it is possible to have this selfless interest to study the karma, which is first of all based on, number one, is this just pure awareness of karma? And that pure awareness of karma naturally will start to develop a kind of, you know, rapport or dynamic, and it'll seem like you're almost moving with it, or it's moving with you.

[75:42]

And this can be done in a very pure way without any selfish gaining idea. So to study karma with no gaining idea, that's the real spirit of study. And each of you has to watch and see if you actually have some secret gaining idea in studying of karma. If you do, then be aware of that gaining idea and then you're rectified, you're upright again. Okay? So it's getting late. So, do you have a short question, Walter? Yeah. Just given a scenario, let's say two cars collide. If you look at it in the conventional way, Then there is blame. And you have... If you look at it in a conventional way, you might be looking for blame. Yes, looking for blame. And then you can say that this person caused this to happen.

[76:47]

Yes. Given the same scenario, you have these two cars colliding, and you could say that these two cars... or a necessary condition for that to happen. So, one has karmic effects, which is conventional, and the other has not. Is that... Am I correct? You're getting warm. May God bless you.

[77:27]

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