Now the basic way of presenting practice, or a basic way of presenting practice is that by the full exertion or the fullness of any limited thing transcends its limit. So the karmic activity is a limited activity perpetrated by a limited being.

[01:17]

A limited being created independently with the ideas of limited existence and limited life. But by fully exerting and fully studying and practicing with these limitations, there's possibility of transcendence. So... So... Yeah. Yeah. Side of... What is a self? And where that self has power, [...] power.

[02:31]

And the whole expression of his karma is not fun. So one time, Yao Shan was sitting in meditation. The teacher walked by. The teacher is at Shukto. No bed. And Shukto said to Yashon, he said, what are you doing? Yashon said, I'm not doing

[03:42]

What you see here, my sitting back is not doing anything at all. I said, well, then you're highly sitting. I just don't laugh. Yashan said, 25 to 7. And Yashan said, if I'm already a 7, I'll do it. I'm still doing it.

[04:52]

Okay? And then Chitra says, well, you say you're not doing anything at all. What is it that you're not doing? And Narshan said, even the 10,000 Sikhs don't know. Even if all the people don't know what this not doing is. Nobody knows what this is. What is this? What is this not doing? This not doing is not another doing. What is it? It is simply nothing more than total exertion of doing.

[05:54]

There's not a not doing on top of doing. But there was 10,000, even one sage could know it. Nobody could know that the non-doing, which is nothing more than doing. Karma, the non-karma, which is nothing more than karma. Nobody knows. Nobody can know that. There's anything in the thing there to know. But that's what the practice is. That's the practice of bullets. They do a practice that nobody knows and nobody can do. It is inseparable from what people can know and what they can do. And everybody all day long, every self, on a power trip, authorizing, doing it all day long. Where's the practice?

[07:06]

The practice is right there in the folds of every expression. The practice is never applied for one, you're writing where one is. So that's not a part of the practice. The non-doing is not a part of my daughter on the other side of the board, but it's not a part of this doing. The 10,000 state, you can't know this non-doing because there's no non-doing there in addition to the doing. Non-doing is just the doing itself. No more, no less. But doing is not about it. Doing is not about it. just itself, no more, no less. I think what doing is about. Doing is about more and less. So freedom from doing, freedom from karma, is the complete, perfect, total exertions of doing of karma.

[08:20]

And Yashon also said, one time he was sitting, and this time one of the students came up to him and said, what kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still like that? And Yashon said, what kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still like that? And Yashon said, what kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still like that? What kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still like that? Thinking, not thinking. And then we'll take what is thinking, not thinking, and then not. What's not thinking? Not thinking is just total absorption of thinking.

[09:25]

That's the way the Buddha thinks. The Buddha thinks non-thinking. The Buddha does not do it. So, what we need to do is learn how to totally exert or to appreciate the total exertion of our activity throughout the day. Then we can appreciate the non-doing and non-thinking that's going on all the time, which is is sitting and thinking the Buddha, which nobody knows. Wonderfully nobody knows. Nobody can sell it. Nobody can scratch it. You can't scratch karma, scratch doing, but you can't plan to scratch non-charm and not hearing because they're nothing, in addition to the way things are. So that is safe, but it's also, even though it's safe, it is available for realization.

[10:43]

Okay, so the practice and study and teaching of the non-thinking and non-doing, for example, and also of non-duality and objectless meditation, these should be grounded in the experience of the thorough working of duality, of subject-object relationships, of karma and of doing and thinking. Okay? So that's what we need to do. And we need to appreciate the fullness of our dualistic activity, of our karmic activity, of our good and bad, of our thinking of good and bad, and our involvement in good and bad.

[11:58]

And in any way, every possible way that we can get involved in this, brings us closer to the totality of the expression. So, again, I just wrote a little blurb for a workshop called full self-expression or liberation to full self-expression. And so I'm proposing that liberation from self, the way to become liberated from self, is through full self-expression. So all the Zen monks, in order to become, in order to realize freedom from self, have to fully express the self. So, that's it. And also I say, which you've heard me say before, you cannot fully express yourself by yourself.

[13:02]

You need others to fully express yourself. If you're by yourself, I don't know where, I don't know how you get by yourself, but if you somehow were by yourself somewhere, and you felt, I've just fully expressed myself, fine. Then you need to go out and express yourself to something else, like to a tree. And trees are usually, you know, it's easy to say, it's easy to project on the tree that the tree says, fine, that was really a great voice. So trees are great. But basically what trees are for, you're supposed to sit at the base of the tree and then work up into full self-expression. Then you go talk to a person and tell the person that you're fully expressing yourself. And the person has something to say about that. And then you see how you feel. So that's probably enough, actually, because now you can start doing it.

[14:13]

Right now you can practice it. Right now you can exert your thinking, you can exert your actions, you can exert your self-expression. Right now you can start doing it. Pedro Madera. Pedro? Yeah. So what comes to me is that to fully express yourself means really to just not, you just be there with what's coming from. In other words, to not get in the wrong way. Right, that's right. Fully express yourself means to just be there with what's happening. In other words, fully express yourself. The entry in the full expression is not move. Every moment, not move. Every moment, not move. Not move. Yeah, that's another thing I... Another workshop.

[15:27]

It's called... It's called... You know, the 16 bodhisattva precepts are precisely what is meant by full self-expression. Want to know what full self-expression is? You know what it is? It's not killing. That's what it is. Killing is not full self-expression. People think, oh, well, then I'll express myself, I'll just go kill somebody. And I'll be re-expressing myself. That's not full self-expression. I say no. I say you can express yourself more fully by not killing them. Live with them. That'll bring out more full self-expression than just like getting rid of them. You can express a little bit by getting rid of somebody, but you can express a lot more by living with them. It's a some sort of expression to kill something. But to make friends with it and hang out with it, that takes a lot more of what you love. So actually, not killing is a beautiful example of what full self-expression is.

[16:29]

Because if you kill something, if you eliminate it, you don't know anymore what it's like to relate to it. When something is there and resisting you is still alive, you can really feel your expression. Like with a cockroach or a rat, you know, when it's right there with you. That brings something out, you know. You can see, you can feel. I want to get rid of this cockroach. I want to get this rat off my cheek or whatever, you know. You can feel that. You get rid of the rat, you get rid of the cockroach, you just lost a major dimension of expression, of feeling what it's like to be you. Each of you feels differently when you have a rat in your body. And that's you. Take away the rat and you don't know what that is anymore. So killing eliminates all kinds of possibilities. That's one of the great things about species, all these varieties of species. They help us be Buddha. Because each species, each creature, is another resistance to our expression, which helps us realize what our expression is.

[17:36]

That's why the precepts are really full self-expression. They're a guide to full self-expression. So, that's part of the problem here, is that you want to express yourself, but you think, oh, you know, the precepts are resisting you, right? You want to say this to somebody, you want to say that to somebody, but you're saying, but that's slandering, or that's speaking of somebody that's praising myself, or that's, you know, that's being possessive. So, every time you try to express yourself, you can go with precepts, you go, oof. Not every time, but But you should push against those precepts. You should express yourself until they start to push back at you. So, yeah, that's what I mean by the precepts. Precepts are great. Like, you know, what is it? Some people, many of us, like, especially at Tatsahara, you walk around Tatsahara, don't you get these feelings sometimes, these great feelings, like you would like to write a poem or something? Well, you said this feeling like, oh, this feeling, I wish I could tell somebody what this feeling is.

[18:41]

This fantastic feeling, you know. But not everybody writes a poem. You're not even supposed to. But anyway, to get that feeling onto the paper or onto a canvas or into marble, you've got to really want to get it out there. And when that marble resists you, gives you a chance to really feel how much you want to say it. Same with the precepts, same with every person you meet. They give you a chance to see if you really want to say, you know, whatever it is. And if they weren't there, you might, you know, you just walk, you just walk right by. You just walk right through, there's no resistance, there's no, there's no, there's no heart. Okay? So I don't know, let's see who I am to defend. Is it part of full self-expression, the invitation, or whatever?

[19:57]

Right. You're not allowed to discuss yourself and then say, I'm happy. Part of full self-expression is part of what you can express is an invitation for feedback. Everybody has that. But part of who you are, part of your capacity is to say, I'd like feedback. I'd like help. Part of what we can be is a creature who asks for help from other beings. Because what we are is a creature who gives help from other beings. So part of our expression is to ask for that. So if somebody says, I'm fully expressing myself, and they don't ask for feedback, then you don't even get it to them, necessarily. You just kind of go, say, well, nice try, but you didn't ask me to say anything, so I won't do that to myself. It's like, you know, the monk says, I'm enlightening them. She says, hmm. But then if you say, I'm enlightening what you think,

[20:59]

Or if you come in to see the teacher, it implies that you're asking for people, and the teacher says something, and then offer something fun and develops. That means you're not fully expressing yourself. You are fully expressing yourself. That's always happening, okay? But you won't be able to realize it. because you're not realizing you have that part of you. You block your own fullness by that lapid indication to others. And you open the realization of fullness by that unique indication. And then some people withdraw the indication. It's so intense to get that kind of help.

[22:02]

Ramon? Yes. Am I wrong if I'm only saying that you can't do it, but for the religious activities, for whatever you say, karma doing, for the young karma fully expressed, is that it is? Well, Yeah. You know, like somebody said the other day about form is emptiness. It's not that form is emptiness, but form immediately itself is emptiness. Form is okusei. Form is okusei. Form itself, immediately itself, completely itself is emptiness. But then, it dwells, it dwells, it dwells. Yeah, because duality won't be sent by ourselves from duality.

[23:03]

Non-duality won't be sent by ourselves from duality. That would mean more duality. We have several kinds of duality, right? We have regular duality, and we have out-of-town dualities. We have not-duality duality, but non-duality is not playing the duality game, which means you've got duality, fine. But in duality we don't say fine. We say, well, it depends. This duality is okay, but this one is not. That's duality. There's right and wrong in duality. But good is no more dualistic than bad. And bad is no more dualistic than good. Dharma of bad is not better than the Dharma of good. Same Dharma. Total exertion of good is emptiness, total exertion of bad is emptiness. Yeah, everything fully expressed is everything as it really is.

[24:14]

That's the full expression of this. The full expression of Gabe is how the whole universe makes Gabe. That's the full expression of Gabe. And that's also what we call the emptiness of Gabe. How well endowed he is by everything is the full expression of him. But that's also why he's not something all by himself. In particular, it's, you know, so, well, take more questions. Yes. I don't know, Nancy? I don't know, Nancy? Can you say something about this last time? Well, what do you mean by exhaustion?

[25:23]

Yes. Yes. With your what? Mind. Mind. that you are late watching, to let the outdoors eat, they may have to hang out there, to walk to, to get with your mom talking. So, I have to, I don't know how to talk to you. Try to have just a few years left here, you do. Well,

[26:29]

Two kinds of exhaustion come up when I use that word. One kind of exhaustion is to do something thoroughly and completely, to live thoroughly and completely. That's one kind of, to exhaust a moment, to exhaust an experience. That's one kind of exhaustion. To exhaustively, you know, live this moment. That's pretty much it in terms of practice. And that's not exactly a tool, that's just, you know, you exhaust, you know, you exhaustively, you exhaust Nancy moment by moment. And the exhaustiveness of you is your suchness. Your suchness is like, you know, Nancy, that's the end of the book on Nancy, that's it. That exhausts Nancy for the moment. That exhaustion is reality. It's another kind of exhaustion which is, I guess, related to something like what you might call the fatigue.

[27:36]

Tired. Frazzled. Jangled. That kind of exhaustion. Huh? Overexertion. Yeah, overexertion. Overexertion. Overexertion is not exhausting. One of the ways to miss being exhausted is to overexert, to try too hard and miss the mark of being you. You're always totally exhausted moment by moment, but if you're exhausting yourself in the form of overdoing, and overdoing means you're working so hard that you can't stay present with what's happening. The other way to not exhaust yourself, not be exhausted and thorough, is to underexert and hold back from what you're doing so that in that holding back you also can't be present for what's happening.

[28:42]

Both are doing, yes. And even in the doing of each, though, there is an exhaustive way to be present with both of those. you can always recover reality but basically The way I feel about fatigue is that basically, for me, it's when my body rhythms get off from each other. That's when I just feel fatigued. And for me, what rest is, is it's a time to realign all my different body rhythms. And sometimes that just takes a minute, you know, just to realign. Sometimes, but sometimes maybe it takes longer. But when your body rhythms get off, I think it's, what do you call it, it's adaptive that your body starts sending these signals that you're not operating effectively because you're starting to get...

[30:03]

You're starting to get split into different parts. You're not coordinated. It's time to, like, re-coordinate all your different systems. So your body starts saying, you know, slow down, simplify, withdraw, and reorganize. So that's called resting when you're fatigued. And following this particular schedule, I think a lot of people have the opportunity to notice when they're getting fatigued. And just our lifestyle here allows us to notice when you're getting fatigued. I don't know if we're actually more fatigued than people outside of you. I don't know if we are.

[31:07]

It's hard to say. We certainly get less sleep than a lot of people in the night. But some people get less sleep than us. And I think that when you're very careful about how you do act, you will tend to set your body rhythms askew or awry from each other less. So fatigue will not arise so much, but you're acting in such a way as to not split your rhythms. In other words, if you're reatturning your rhythms often as you proceed, even while you're working, you tend to... that changes your fatigue pattern. And there are natural rhythms which you find throughout the day where your body actually is kind of saying to you, now it's time to realign.

[32:14]

This is a realignment time. Just relax a little bit now and realign for a little while and then come back. So there's these cycles throughout the day. And I think we're actually supposed to like turn inward and realign. And then we can go on. But if we force ourselves to go outward during those times when we're actually being asked to sort of like realign, we miss the opportunity to do that, then the accumulation builds. I mean, it builds even though it's sort of in the background because our energy comes back up again. But it may not take that long to realign during these times when you get a signal that's what to do. Now, the exhaustion, I don't know if it's a tool exactly, but it's just a fact of having a complex system where you have all these different rhythms, heart rhythm, digestive rhythm, brain rhythms, respiration rhythm.

[33:27]

I don't know how many rhythms you have, but anyway, they get out of whack and they can be realigned. And when they're realigned, we feel... ready to go again. You feel comfortable about action. And you feel comfortable being awake, or you feel comfortable looking at the world. That kind of exhaustion is different from the exhaustion I'm talking about, which is an exhaustion you do on everything. When you're tired, when you're awake, when you're active, when you're calm, or when you're connected, it's the exhaustion which is not doing anything. It is the exhaustion of what's happening. That's a different kind of exhaustion. That's always it. That's always it. And it's a question of appreciating it and celebrating it and being aligned with that, too. Lee?

[34:36]

Okay. Liz? I think we can't do it. [...] I am to be able to support all things, that we are able to help. You know, we are a Christian, you know, nothing about this. It seems that when we are feeling it, we are feeling it, but we are feeling it. And we are perfect, because some of you are tired, nothing is up to us. We are feeling it. Are you asking about if you start examining your activity and you're having trouble finding an actor?

[35:46]

Is that one of the problems you're raising? Yeah. Okay. Well, if you can't see it yet, that's where you're at, at that point. It isn't clear that there's an actor. Okay. Can you feel any sense that's, you know... Can you give an example of something where you can sense that there's some action or activity? Can you give an example of some action or activity, like walking across the room? And so that you might have trouble telling that there's somebody who's doing that? Can you say?

[36:48]

Okay. And you lost the problem? You don't have to find yourself that does the walking across the moon. You don't have to. Maybe you're not into that. Maybe you're not. Maybe this is not a karmic activity, but It is a headache. Yeah, I think most people do. And they're not conscious of it, though.

[37:48]

It's almost subconscious. But that's part of it, is that we assume that there is a self that can be an authority. We assume that there is an author. We assume that. That's in the background of the activity of our body and mind. Okay? So, the basic definition of karma... is thinking. Thinking is the definition of karma. And thinking is actually what we call mental action. So, feeling anger, for example, is not thinking. That's not an example of thinking. Feeling attraction is not an example of thinking. Feeling pain, sensing pain, is not an example of thinking. Thinking is like When there's a clear, well, thinking is the impulsive quality of your mind.

[38:52]

It's the impulsive quality of your experience. When you experience an impulse or a motive or a tendency to act, that's karma. And you can be angry and yet not told of doing anything about the anger. Or you can be angry and think you'd like to do something. Your impulse in response to the anger. That impulse, if it's very clear and all of your consciousness at that moment is lined up with that impulse, then it would be a very clear example of karma. Sometimes karma is unclear. In some moments of consciousness, if you examine the shape of your mind, you cannot tell clearly where it wants to go. So, for example, when the mind is receiving information, in a receptive mode of just experiencing color or pain, in a case like that, your mind is shaped kind of like a dish, kind of flat.

[39:56]

It is receiving. Receptive modes are not active karma. Not all states of consciousness are active karma. But states of receptivity are the results of karma. The way you experience things is a result of the way you act, the way you think you act. Not all states of experience are active states of karma. For example, seeing yellow, just experiencing yellow, and feeling pleasure at that time, or experiencing pleasure, that's not a karmic act. It has consequences, but it's not itself a karmic act, and your mind, in a sense, is open and flat in terms of its tendencies. It doesn't mean to go anywhere, it's just receiving data at that moment.

[41:01]

But then if you feel, after seeing yellow, you feel a strong inclination to grasp something or reject something or hurt something or help something, then that's a tendency to remind that you're thinking. I should say that is thinking. If there isn't a background or foreground on the sidelines or up in the front of some place some assumption or some sense that there's a self and that that self has power, Power to act. Independent power to act. And that is an assumption which we carry with us, which has been trained into us and reinforced to. That self assumption or that self belief in combination with this inclination is a moment of mental karma. A moment of thinking. Thinking is karma. Then it can be further ramified into speech and posture. And again, if there is a self there, an authoritative, powerful self, powerful in the sense that it can act by itself, then that's another activity of karma.

[42:14]

Watching this, observing this story, how this happens, is the way to develop a full realization, a total exertion of karma. It's to get on that karmic process and become very intimate with it, so intimate with it that you're intimate with its ongoing full expression. I don't see that. If there's no volition, there's no separation of

[43:15]

The ultimate side is karma. How can there be activity that isn't karma? I would say that you can have it like a human organism, a human consciousness, and that consciousness can have inclinations in it. For example, it could be the impulse or the shape of the thinking can be along the lines of, I would like, not I would like to, I wish, not I wish. Wouldn't it be wonderful? Wouldn't it be fabulous if this person was really happy? Wouldn't it be wonderful if this person was free of pain and suffering? Wouldn't it be wonderful if this person was full of love and bliss?

[44:20]

This kind of thought could be in the mind. Such a thought can form in the human mind. And that is an inclination, a wish. an intention, a hope, a motivation. Okay? But, if I don't see, if I don't, if this person doesn't give rise to thought, I'm going to do that. Okay? Then there's not karma. And the ultimate perspective is a perspective which can see, for example, this is karma, this is not karma. and including that this is karma and the study of karma is not karma. The ultimate position can see that and understand that. But the ultimate position is just the view which when you have that view sets you free from this picture.

[45:24]

Because when you see how karma works, the self drops out of it. And then there is the basic infrastructure of karma, which is a human consciousness which can form impulses. And from those impulses, activity can arise. But the activity is not self-generated, self-governed, governed by a self, an independent self. It happens without the self being held separate from it. So a Buddha can, an enlightened being, can be a place where activity arises, but they don't do it. Yes. Exactly. The teeth have been removed. The strangling aspect of the process has been removed.

[46:33]

And such a happy person, such a happy being, is happy partly because they're free of the strangulation, but they're also happy because they think such happy thoughts about other people. Even miserable people they have happy thoughts about. They don't overlook the fact that the person is suffering, that information comes to them, but they're able to wish the best for this person, this animal, whatever it is, and then not say that I'm going to personally, by my power, make that happen. Rather, the very thing the very nature that is happy and wishes us for beings, that nature will do the job. That awareness will do the job. So, like, the self-fulfilling samadhi is the one who's going to do these wonderful acts. Not me. But the self-fulfilling samadhi can use my consciousness.

[47:38]

You know, my organism can use my organism for its purposes. And for me, the person who still maybe somewhat is involved in karma, the way I can join that self-fulfilling samadhi, the way I can join that non-thinking samadhi, the way I can join that samadhi, that awareness, and be absorbed in the kind of life that isn't me operating by myself, where I can enter the world where I'm working together with everybody, the way I enter that is by admitting to whatever extent I'm not doing. That's my particular gate, my door into this interconnected working, which helps all beings and allows me to act in that space. I entered through to whatever extent I think I act out independently. I admit that. I watch that. I learn that. We need to become experts on our own karma. And experts means we need to get intimate with to whatever extent we're operating on the level of I did that myself.

[48:47]

And as you get more and more intimate with it, you're closer and closer to the point of realizing liberation from it. And then entry into a new way of activity. It is Buddha's activity now. And the hands reach out and help people, but they aren't driven by self anymore. They aren't self-operated. See you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See it? You can't see full self-expression. You can realize it. It's always going on. It's always going on. It never misses. Because full self-expression is ta-ta-ta, is suchness. So what we're doing, the way to realize full self-expression is called to train yourself into suchness.

[49:53]

To train the person who is sort of slightly dislocated, slightly off sides from suchness, to train him into suchness. Now the way you train him into suchness is to get him to sit still because he's always going a little too fast or a little too slow. He's always lagging behind or getting ahead for whatever reason. When he's not moving, he'll be totally himself. He'll be such. Yeah. Because there is going to be movement, the illusion of movement is going to continue. The karma is going to be happening. So how can we find the stillness in the midst of this karma? No, because actually in the moment you can't move because the definition of a moment doesn't allow movement. Because as soon as there's movement you've got another moment. So does that just mean...

[50:56]

No, it doesn't mean see time. It means to see time. Actually, the training is to get your timing right. The training is you get yourself to be on time. You're mostly training yourself to be with the discontinuous time. Get with the beats of time. You train yourself that way. When you're finally sitting still, There's no time anymore. When you're sitting still, there's no, there's no sequential time. I'm not sure I have this. [...] I'm Well, if that is happy more, it's more like, it's almost like less.

[52:05]

Usually what we mean by stillness, I guess, is that we're still, and then a half a second later we're still still. Rather than in the moment we're still. In a sense, you can't have an experience if it's moving. Because then it would change into another one. For experience, for the sense of something happening, there has to be a little bit of stillness there. Long enough for some sense of something just existed, something just appeared, before it changes. Well, you're awfully close to it, though.

[53:10]

It's just... In terms of Buddhist experiential education, the point is that an experience can't move. You have to have this thing come up here and be there long enough to say, okay, this is happening, this is pain. In a moment of pain, the pain isn't moving. Otherwise you've got like this pain and that pain. Things changing means that there's some way for a little while. Otherwise there would be no way to experience change. And when something's that appearing a certain way for a moment, that's what we call a moment, experientially. We don't know how long that is, but it's the length of whatever it is that the thing is that way. However long this pain lasts, before it gets stronger or weaker or goes away, however long that is, that's a moment of experience.

[54:15]

However long this pleasure, however long this is yellow, whatever it is, that's the turn. And that doesn't move. Now, if you sit in a zendo, like sit, you know, you try to sit still, and a minute goes by, tremendous changes happen in your body. Tremendous, your heart's like going boom, [...] boom. Electrical impulses are zipping all around. There's tremendous movement inside this body all the time. Except, there is not movement in a moment of human experience. When you have an experience, it isn't that that's reality. That's not like reality, that's just an experience you have. And the way we operate this, the way we operate is we make what's happening into these little packages which don't move. Simultaneously, while these packages are going on, you may say world systems have been totally revamped.

[55:19]

while you were having this thing called, you know, a day at the beach, or a moment of quiet, or a sweet taste. The way we are is we make things into these little packages, and those packages are a moment of experience. And we make them into packages that don't move. We do that. And then we also can practice various kinds of exertion, like trying to sit still, but we also know that while we're trying to sit still, we're also going to have a sense that those were different stillnesses, but there was some sense of continuity of stillness there. And you can develop that sense of stillness in the midst of the change after a while. But you can also find it in each moment

[56:20]

One of the first, one of the times, one time I told this story before, one time I offered incense in Kaisando at San Francisco, and I had the incense stick in my hand, and I moved it up through the air and put it in the incense bowl, and I could see that I wasn't moving. Usually, what we call not moving is like this. But you don't necessarily get that. This is the kind of movement which depends on this. And this is the kind of stillness which depends on this and goes away when I go like this. And then now it goes away again when my hand goes over here, it goes away. And then when my hand goes over there, it goes away. But this was a stillness which was there when my hand was ordinarily called moving. I felt that stillness. It was the same all the way through that ordinary emotion.

[57:26]

And that stillness is a stillness of me being, you know, just what I am moment by moment. You are always unmovingly unmovingly you are always immovably yourself. You are always unmovingly you You never are not. There's no way that you can't be. You can't get away from that. So that's what I mean by not moving. It's an act of faith in a sense. It's a kind of a ritual. It's a religious ritual which is called let's appreciate emotionlessness of my nature. Now, it might help to go up and sit in the meditation hall and sit still for 40 minutes and not move much.

[58:32]

That might help you get the hang of it. But as I said, for me, one of the times when I most strongly realized it was while my hand was moving through the air with incense sticking. That's when I finally felt like, well, there it is. That's it. This is what I've been looking for. This is what my faith was about, is this kind of presence, this kind of unmovingly being alive. Being alive and not moving. Not moving and being alive. And this is the place where you can check out what's going on. You're there, so you can check out, is there somebody doing this or not? Is there some idea that some powerful being can do this by himself or not? If so, get in there. See how that works. Watch how it works. Buddha did this. He saw. Buddha, Chakamuni Buddha, saw. I think I can do this and that. And he even saw himself do some bad stuff.

[59:33]

And he saw how it worked. And as he saw how he thought that he could operate independently and how he did these things, his mind was transformed by the vision of what he saw himself doing. When you watch yourself doing this, you change. You've just been educated about what you're up to. You've caught yourself in the act. You're a different person. I mean, you're a different person and you have a different understanding of life. So, kind of your homework assignment, is let's see if you can find yourself doing something. See if you can catch yourself by thinking that you do something. Okay. Gabe? You still have a question? No. there was kind of just a question about so in that you described with that you described that as one moment with that just like a no, it wasn't one moment it was a bunch of moments so my question I guess is something like so there's

[61:06]

But that stillness is something that's in the midst of there being all these packages. In each package, it's not exactly a package of moments, but a moment is a package. I'm saying a moment is a package. There aren't really moments. We make the world into these little moments. We make the world into these little packages. Those are our experiences. But there's not some world It's not like there's a world out there where we make it happen. Does that look so? Yeah. I am saying that there's a world out there which is, what do you call it, that isn't the way we think it is. But it's not like a world that's sitting there kind of like saying, well, I'm not the way you think I am and I have nothing to do with you.

[62:08]

It's more of a world that's going, it's a world that's saying, oh, oh gosh, oh gee, oh, you shouldn't have. I didn't know. Well, no, please, no. It's like that kind of a world. It's not like, you know, we're sitting here thinking, oh, the world's such and such a way and the world's like sort of some other place saying, I'm not even going to mention that those people are thinking about me this way. I mean, I don't even know that there's humans who are, like, misconstruing me. It actually is more like that. It's more like, you know, humans are misconstruing me, but I'm going to pretend like they're not. It's like that. That's how the world is, kind of. But then sometimes it says, okay, okay, okay, you're misconstruing me and I care. There is a world out there that's not what you think it is. For example, the world that I think What the world that I'm thinking about is not the one that you're thinking about. That's a world. I got a world here that's not the one you're thinking about.

[63:08]

But that's not the world either. Because the world I'm thinking about says that your world's connected to my world. So, there are things going on that are not dreamt of by you, Horatio. But they're connected to you. They're connected to your dreams. Your dreams affect them. They are affected by your dreams. The way you dream reshapes the universe. The way you breathe, the way you walk, the way you think. The way you see, the way you smell reshapes the universe. The universe is an intimate, receptive, and co-involving relationship with you and everything about you. But that's not the world you think of, necessarily. And even if you think of it, it's not just what you just thought of.

[64:10]

But it will respond to your thoughts about it. But it's not other than you. It's just responding to you all the time. And as you know, and as you get intimate with how you're thinking about the world, you get intimate with the world. Because that is the way you relate to the world, to a great extent, is through your thinking. You also relate to the world through your fingernails, through your pores, through the soles of your feet, through your eardrums. Your whole body is like dancing with the world all day long. But that part's going along fine and, you know, there's nothing we can do about that. That's not, you know, that's not volitional. That's not karma. The way your eardrum's kind of like going boopity boop boop boop with what I'm saying right now. That's not karma.

[65:12]

But you're doing that and that's, you know, and that's part of our relationship right now. But the karma part, it causes the problems. It's the karma part that can lead to us saying, no, I'm not in relationship to so-and-so. I don't care about so-and-so. Your eardrum doesn't say, I don't care about that sound. It just goes... In a sense, your eardrum does care about sounds. Now, there's some sound you say, you say, well, my eardrum doesn't care about sound waves that are really, really low frequency. You can say it doesn't care because it doesn't move. But it's not exactly it doesn't care. It's that it's slightly defensive. You know what I mean? No. Okay. The eardrum, our eardrum is sensitive to very low frequencies. Very low frequencies can move our eardrum. It's got a very good bass detector.

[66:14]

But at a certain point it says no. The reason why it says no is because if it was any more sensitive to low frequencies, you'd be hearing your heartbeat. And then you start hearing your digestion and things like that. And then you start hearing your aging, you know. If you got any lower frequencies, there would be too much noise about our own inner system. So it wouldn't be good for sensing external sounds. But it's as sensitive as it can be without picking up its own stuff. But it's just defensive. It's not really that you care about these sounds. You would like to hear them too. It just said, in terms of input to the brain, it's kind of like, let's not have this right now, okay? So the ear does care about the silence. It doesn't say, no, I don't care. It also doesn't say, no, I do care. It just goes like this. And your eyes care about certain kinds of electromagnetic radiation. And so on.

[67:17]

But our thinking, our thinking can say, no, I don't care about something. Something is right in front of you and say, I don't care about you. And that thinking is how you're relating to the person. The way you think about somebody is how your life does this thing with people. Like you think, oh, this is like Buddha here, my God. If you think about people with the Buddha, then thinking about that way, that's the kind of interface you have with them. If you think they're your enemy, that's the kind of interface. If you think this doesn't matter. So you're thinking, if you get in touch with how you think, you get in touch with how you touch the world. And as you're intimate with that, you're intimate with the world. And as you transform that, you transform the world. You reshape the world. The world says, oh, you're shaping me differently. Okay, now. And then it comes back and it relates to your senses. This physical world changes, and your senses get changed, get new input, new kind of sound comes to your ears. So it's very intimate.

[68:21]

It's not other, but it's not the same as what you think it is. Just like if I touch your face, it's not that you're the touching that I'm doing, but you certainly are related to it and you're affected by it. And then I'm affected by the way you're affected by it. But you're not my touching. So you're not my thinking. But my thinking touches you, just like my hands can touch you. My thinking is just my thinking. That's all it is. And if I connect a self to my thinking, then my thinking becomes my karma. And my karma then is just my karma. But again, my karma is how I relate to the world too. And if I become intimate with my karma, I become intimate with the world. And if I become intimate with the world, my karma is transformed through that intimacy. It's transformed through, first of all, my intimacy with my karma itself is not karma. My intimacy with my karma is zazen.

[69:26]

Intimacy with your karma is non-karma. So intimacy with your karma means that you have a non-karmic relationship with the world now. You're intimate with your karma, you have a non-karmic, so then you're intimately relating to the world now non-karmically. In other words, harmoniously. But we can't skip over... To whatever extent, we're not intimate with our karma. We can't say, okay, I'll be intimate with my karma. We have to actually get intimate with it. And that, again, is actually kind of like it's work in a sense. You have to pay attention to what you're physically doing and then pay attention to the fact that you think you're doing it and pay attention to what kind of motivation you have. That's part of physical awareness, motivational awareness, and self-awareness. You need all that, and that requires a lot of dedication of attention.

[70:30]

And you have to have faith that that's going to be helpful to you and everybody else. And actually, to be really good at it, you have to have faith that's going to help other people. Just for yourself won't be enough to really get good at it. You can get pretty good at this meditation on karma knowing that it'll be good for you. But to really get good at it, you have to really appreciate other living beings. In order to be really careful and intimate with this meditation on karma, you have to really think other people are precious. And not just other people, all other beings. Because that sense of preciousness is what it takes to really lovingly, carefully settle into the awareness of the karma. So that's why bodhisattvas are the only ones who can really understand the subtleties of the mind, because you can't really understand the subtleties of the mind unless you really love the world, really appreciate it, because you need that sensitivity and that caring about the touch and the consequences of your action.

[71:47]

You need to really care about whether you set something down this way or that way, how that is for a living being. in order to understand the full magnitude, the full subtlety of your karma. Yes, step on the back. So, you said that the impulse to do something when you're feeling it, the impulse to do something when you're feeling it. Impulse, yeah. Right. So, my question is... The clear impulse. If it's vague, it's still karma, but it's called indeterminate karma. You can't tell where it's going. So, this is my question. Let's say a person is feeling angry and... has fantasies of, you know, fantasies of doing something. And while these fantasies are arising, is aware of the fact that there are fantasies and that is fact that you're not going to do anything.

[73:00]

So, is that... No, it's not karma. ...not karma. She said she's angry, you know, that she has fantasies of doing something, like hurting the person, right? Right. And she knows it's a fantasy. But you can know it's a fantasy and still want to do it. So I think I'm angry at so-and-so and I have a fantasy now of punching them in a way that will hurt them rather than a way that they'll literally enjoy. You don't know about those, huh? Anyway. I'm angry at someone. I had this fantasy of hurting them. Okay? Can I want to do it? That's karma. But karma, you know, the wanting to do the fantasy, even if you know it's a fantasy, still counts. I really would like to fulfill this fantasy, and that's a karmic thought. But when you think of something like, I don't know what, like think of Pedro, I'm not even angry at him, but I imagine, you know, like cutting him up in little pieces, right?

[74:09]

You know? But I, you know, but I no way at all ever want to hurt him at all. I mean, I do not want to hurt him, but I like to think of chopping a bit. Like I used to think of my teacher as my teacher dead, you know. It was good. I snapped me out of certain kinds of distractions in my meditation. I also used to think of myself on Page Street. You know, with my guts ripped open and my intestines all over the street. Cars, trucks running over it. Just to do that, have those fantasies. But I didn't want to hurt myself or hurt my teacher. And not the slightest bit of anger or ill will towards either one of us. I did both of those things just to sort of, just to wake me up a little bit. A little drowsy, just think of it. A little bit, a snapshot of it maybe. Each person has their own little images that maybe snap them out of sleepiness or snap them out of lust or something. No, if you think, forget the image, but just if you think, okay, I'm going to do something now to wake me up.

[75:20]

I'm going to imagine something now. Forget about what the imagination is, but I'm going to do a, what do you call it, a little stimulation to get myself out. But anyway, when you're trying to get concentrated, sometimes you get a little drowsy or a little bit too concentrated. You want to liven things up a little bit. So I'm going to think of a kind of a bright image or a colorful image to wake me up. If I think I'm going to think of that in order to have this effect, then that's karma. In this case, I would say it's wholesome karma because basically I'm just trying to wake up, be alert in my meditation and be present because I'm having trouble sitting still and comfortably and staying awake. So now I can sit still comfortably and with that little bit of color there, wake up. Or I'm sitting still comfortably and I'm getting distracted into lustful thoughts so that little image will bring me back to a more serious and balanced presence. If I think that way, then it's karma.

[76:22]

Which is, okay, it's karma. And it's wholesome karma, I would say, in this case. Pretty much. Unless you paint some other colors in and change the context and say, oh, that makes it unwholesome. For example, if you did this whole story, did this thing, but added in the additional coloring, and this is going to make my meditation better than David's. You know? You know? And I really want to, like, you know, I really want to have, you know, mind meditation really be bright and shiny so he'll look really dull and, you know, and not too good compared to me. And then, you know, they'll make me be you. Because, you know, they'll obviously, you know, all glowing, you know, and awake, relaxed and bright. And, you know, and actually David's pretty good, but compared to me, he's going to look really dark and sleepy. As a matter of fact, he'll probably go to sleep immediately out of, you know, discouragement. I see how bright I am. If you have that stuff around this, then this basically wholesome concentration move would turn into bad country.

[77:31]

Because there's an overarching thing of wanting to beat you up. So that's how concentration, which by itself, before I tell you what the purpose is, is wholesome, but to serve certain purposes is unwholesome. But if just simply here you are sitting there in the zendo, you're happy, you would like everybody in the zendo to be awake and alert and happy, and you're just working on yourself, too, to wake yourself up, then that little piece of concentration technique, concentration karma, was wholesome. And the thing is to get intimate with that. Wholesome karma, that's good, it's good. And wholesome karma is easier to get intimate with than unwholesome karma, generally speaking. And not only that, but even if it isn't, the reason why you sometimes can be intimate with unwholesome karma is a result of wholesome karma. Sometimes you do unwholesome karma and you can say, oh, that's really unwholesome, and you're really intimate with it.

[78:38]

The reason why you can be intimate with it is because you have a lot of wholesome karma, which helps you be present even while you're doing unwholesome karma, so you can learn by that mistake. Unwholesome karma tends to make you not able to be with any kind of karma. That's the bad thing about unwholesome karma, is it makes it harder for you to be intimate with your karma. So doing good karma, even though it's karma, is good in a sense primarily in that it helps you be better at studying karma. But people are getting sleepy, I think. Want to stand up for a little while? Would that help? I'm confused. I thought that if you hadn't thought like that and you had then just what we described, all these well wishes and so forth around thoughts. Just the fact that your attention to that made that whole event not kind of doubt.

[79:43]

And you're saying it's all different. I thought it was yawning. Well, you're right in a sense that's the whole story we told. In some sense, all the well-wishing around around that that negative thought would kind of would make it would make it I said it would make it wholesome karma but I was saying that add to that the actual wish that they would they would be happy and wishing to do something to make them happy then it would be karma it would be karma it would be wholesome karma wishing yeah we had a whole bunch of things And it wasn't because we didn't have any time at all. Do you want to give the example of that? Yeah. OK. No, I don't have one. Oh. Oh, yeah, right. That's right. While I was talking about Steve, the thing that makes... I can't hear what that was.

[80:45]

Well, just that there's no self-identity of independent self there, imagine, in conjunction with these well wishes. If there's no self there, then it wouldn't be karmic. But wishing that... I thought we were in a karmic milieu, which has got a self here. Okay? No? That doesn't make sense to you? I don't know where you're at now. Okay. You're making all these faces, but not saying anything. Well, I'm making out that. I think so. Whether it's a self or if there was a self, then there wouldn't be any wishing at all if there were a self. Well, here's my example. I cross my legs, I tap my knee, right? And I can tell you when there's a self there and when there's not. Okay? I can tell you that when the knee jerks, when it gets hit, that the self didn't do that.

[81:50]

Because I got the self here and it didn't do that. Because it surprised me. You know? So that's an example of activity that's not karmic. And I can tell some of the time. Maybe not all the time, but I can tell when I think I did something. And there's various ways I can tell. Want to know about those ways? I'll tell you sometime. So, Dan, what if you're just kidding? And the image just arises all the way it felt. You didn't do it, it just paint. Yes. It's like an image of flashing. You don't think you did it. You don't think you did it. Okay? You don't think you did it. Uh-huh. You thinking you did it is part of what makes karma. When you do karma, you think that. You think. I think that. That's karma. I see. I think that. Oh, but what if you don't say I think that? You really would say karma. If you don't... Yeah, if you don't say that and you check it out, it's not just like you're spaced out, but really it's just like something pops up and it's just like a knee jerk.

[82:51]

At that time it's not karma. It's just an image. It's not karma. Imagination is not the same as karma. But when imagination takes the form of a conceivable action, a conceivable action, And you imagine that you're going to do it, then it's karma. I see. OK. I understand. Thank you. You're welcome. Marsha. Excuse me. I think Jim was next. OK. I'm going to stop the karma train for a minute and go back to another question. OK. Maybe someone's saying something. The idea of total exertion. Total expression. How is that different than photoexertion? Because it's kind of the same. Well, I mean, because I don't see how you can have photoexertion and study, say, on photoexertion and not moving.

[84:01]

Well, study at the time of total exertion, the cell drops away. Prior to that, it's kind of like, I'm studying my karma. Or I'm studying, yeah, I'm studying this karma. I'm studying my thinking. There's me and there's the herd. There's me and there's the seed. There's me and the smell. There's me and the thought. So you train yourself and you train yourself and you train yourself until you're more and more totally exerted and absorbed into this kind of suchness. When you're not just training anymore, but you've realized the actual practice of suchness. There isn't a self outside there. So it isn't a self like over here studying the sounds, studying the thinking, studying the karma. The self is absorbed into it. That's what total exertion of yourself is, total exertion of yourself, but in the separate self drops away. And it's just the activity. But for Buddha, there's a Buddha activity, but there's not, Shakyamuni Buddha doesn't own the Buddha activity or disown it. It's not like I'm Shakyamuni Buddha over here doing this Buddha activity over there.

[85:04]

There's just Buddha activity, that's it. There's just total exertion. There's not a person doing it. As you train, and you're training, you're still doing it. You're still karma. I'm training myself at letting the herd be just the herd. So then Buddha says, but when for you, in the herd there is just the herd, when there's total absorption that way, then there's not a self in addition to it. There's no identification. So as long as you still have that self, that self should be studying. That self should be studying, training in suchness. Training in the suchness of karma, training in the suchness of non-karma too, because not everything is karma. Training in the suchness of just a sensory process. So that self shouldn't be just like trying to totally exist in the activities.

[86:04]

It should be training itself in total exertion. It should be training itself in total expression. It should be trying to wake up to, what expression do I sense I'm doing? And is it total? And if I think it's total, then there's ways to check it out. Are the precepts happening? It's not killing anyone. If the precepts are violated, then maybe this isn't total exertion. Or maybe I'll go argue with Reb and say, no, I think it is possible I found out I can totally exert myself and kill something. You know, if he didn't convince me. And so on, you know. But there are various ways you can use to check. But if you don't think you're totally exerting yourself yet, there's not too much to talk about. You can try harder. Usually when you think you're holding back, you are. Sometimes when you're overdoing it, you don't notice that you're missing it. Sometimes people over-try too hard and they think, finally I got it. Then they find out. But sometimes you try too hard and you feel like, yeah, I got there, but then I overshot it.

[87:07]

And that wasn't it either. Like I've got, I've got that kind of thing. I worked too hard. I said, this wasn't what I wanted. This is not it. Working too hard is not it. When you get there, you probably sense, in some sense, you might say, hey, this seems like, this is kind of like, I don't care if this is total exertion. This is what I want. This is my, this is the life I want. And that's probably total exertion. And it might have followed after a long time of like, trying to get more and more complete in your activity and completing your expression. When you finally get there, you might not even know anymore or care anymore about the whole program. That's kind of when you got it. And you might be right a while before you even noticed or cared that you got it because you got something you really wanted rather than what you're trying to get. And then you might say, well, I think I got it anyway. And you might go check it out and find out that you're right or find out that you're shaking. You got it for a second, but then you lost it. Slip back into, you know, me doing things again. So it's possible to hit the mark of total exertion and then slip off.

[88:11]

I think so. Right? I think that's about fine. You can get that place where you're like totally there and like just all this creativity is just coming out of the world and then you slip back, you know, to partial participation of it. But that encourages you and shows you that that can happen. There can be that total, total, total. Marsha? Yes. When you actually have an unwholesome karma, like that? Maybe just the thinking? OK. Well, the way you do it is you let that thought just be that thought. You let that unwholesome thought just be that unwholesome thought. That's the way to do it.

[89:14]

At that time, it's an unwholesome thought, but you let it just be that unwholesome thought exactly, precisely, suchly like it is. And then you liberate it in the middle of an unwholesome thought. Yes. The thought is always this full expression of itself. But sometimes we don't participate with a full expression.

[89:41]

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