This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. We have arrived at the last day of Sushi, apparently. And also, apparently, the last Dharma talk on karma for the practice period. And we'll have a little bit of a closing class, a brief closing class on the day after Shusul ceremony to wrap up our conversation. But this is the last formal talk. And I'd like to begin by sharing a passage from the book Midnight's Children. by the British American writer of Indian descent, Salman Rushdie.

[01:09]

Who, what, am I? My answer, I am the sum total of everything that went before me. All I have been, seen, done. of everything done to me. I am everyone, everything, whose being in the world affected and was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone, which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter. Each eye Every one of the now 600 million plus of us contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time.

[02:10]

To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world. I find this passage a wonderful summation of dependent origination and karma. although I'm not so sure that it was Rashti's intention to invoke karma when he wrote it. So I wonder, do you feel as if, during our study of karma, this on-go, that to understand your own karma, the sum total of everything that went before you, of all you have been seen done, of everything done to you, that you have to swallow a world, or maybe multiple worlds? And through our study of karma, do you have any more sense, any more of a sense that each one of us also contains a similar multitude?

[03:21]

Do you see that in each other when you look at each other? Who, what am I? If not the entire world, the entire universe arising and falling in all ten directions and three times past, present, future simultaneously. The immensity and complexity and unfoundability of karma, vast. It's understandable that the Buddha would warn us that comprehending the workings and implications of karma are beyond the mind's reach and could lead to vexation and madness. To understand karma, you'll have to swallow a world. How big is your mind? Westy's passage reminds me of a quote by Jean-Paul Sartre.

[04:35]

During my university years, I considered myself an existentialist, and one of my periods at the time was Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, I made it a point even to visit the grave sites of Sartre and the Cynod de Peboire when I first visited Paris. And I think that my study and my embrace of existentialism laid the ground for my later embrace of Buddhism after college. And Sartra here using the male pronoun for all mankind as was the habit of his time says the following. Man is nothing else but what he purposes. He exists only insofar as he realizes himself. He is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions. Nothing else but what his life is. So while Satura was not a Buddhist, what he says here resonates with the Buddhist teaching of karma, which tells us we are our actions.

[05:49]

We are the totality of our actions. An action, as you know, it has three aspects. What you think, what you say, what you do. And Sartre's declaration, however, leaves out the detail of thoughts on which our speech and actions are based. So we could amend Sartre's statement to say, a person is the sum of their thoughts, words, and acts. And as we know, when you produce an action, you produce karma. Thich Nhat Hanh puts it, karma is your continuation. Karma is your continuation. Even when you die and your body disintegrates, you continue always due to your actions. Nothing is lost in this universe. According to the law of conservation of energy, you cannot create new energy nor lose energy. So everything we produce in terms of body, speech and action will continue after us.

[06:55]

Don't imagine they will disappear. Everything you do will have its signature. Everything you say carries your signature. You are the author and that is your continuation. So the question we are left with is how do we want to live if our living results in a continuation of us, of this life energy, in some form. And furthermore, if our life now is the sum and continuation of our past actions, and if in our life now we experience unhappiness and suffering, then how do we want to live now so that going forward we will experience a continuation or a new form in which there is greater happiness and less suffering.

[08:07]

I sometimes wonder, what would I be doing now if I wasn't fully dedicating my life and work to the Buddha way? And furthermore, what would the world be like now if the Buddha had never been born? if all his wise and compassionate teachings had not resonated with, impacted, and powerfully transformed my life and the lives of millions of people, cultures, and nations over 2,500 years? What shape would the world be taking now without the influence of his karma and life's dreams? And how would the world be if you had never been born? Think of your parents, who maybe would not be parents, of your friends and partners, of the span of your life thus far, of all of your activities and the ways that they have left some ripple, however small, in the great river of being, mixing with and affecting the movement

[09:24]

dance and flow of other currents. But the Buddha was born and lived and had impact on the world. You have been born and live and have impact on the world. What do you want your continuation to be? What wake of life energy do you want to leave behind? To what purpose do you want your life force to serve? If you knew this was your very last birth, how would you be living now? our morning, we will celebrate Shakyamuni Buddha's birthday.

[10:37]

We're told the Buddha was born in, you know, circa 487 BCE, and he died at the age of the 80s. So this would be approximately his 2,588th birthday. That's a lot of candles. And in terms of samsara, in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, The birth we're celebrating was the Buddha's last one. It was his final rebirth. Due to his deep desire and quest to be ultimately free of relentless suffering that comes with birth and death, and the insights into the nature of reality and rebirth that he had on the night of his awakening, Siddhartha Gautama discovered a path leading off up the grip of samsara, and discovered the truth of karma, the nature of karma, how to work with karma, and the path to going beyond and ending karma.

[11:44]

And we're to understand he was forever done with rebirth. And after his parinirvana, he never took birth again. Although if we take a page from Thich Nhat Hanh, on what happens after death, then the Buddha never went away. He's still with us. He's with us in his words and teachings that have been passed down to us. He's with us in the air we breathe. We're still breathing the same air as the Buddha breathed. He's with us in the flowers we smell, in the sunlight that warns us. He is still being reborn. although not as a karmic eddy, not as a continuation of relational compulsion set in motion by ignorance. But it's something beyond karma.

[12:48]

To my mind, because we are practicing, the Buddha is still practicing. We are all Buddhas studying and practicing what it is to be Buddhas. Buddha is alive in the practice of each and every one of us. I expect you're all familiar with the traditional story of the Buddha's last incarnation in life. How he was born a prince into a wealthy bravan family and his name Siddhartha Gautama. and he lived a sheltered life until the age of 29 when he encountered what is known as the Four Messengers. In the first three figures, an old person, a sick person, and a corpse brought into focus for him the realities of old age, sickness, and death. And the fourth figure, a wandering monk, ignited in Gautama a series of questions regarding how he himself

[13:56]

was bound to the endless karmic cycle of old age, sickness, and death, and rebirth. In the Mahjama Nakaya, he is quoted as saying, what if I, being subject myself to aging, illness, death, sorrow, defilement, seeing the drawbacks of aging, illness, death, sorrow, defilement, were to seek the agingless, illnessless, deathless, sorrowless, unexcelled rest from the yoke, unbinding. So when Buddha describes his search for the undefiled, unexcelled rest from the yoke, yoke that is, unbinding, he is referring to liberation from the cycle of transmigration. And compelled by these questions, he immediately left his sheltered life and became a wandering seeker of a way beyond the chains of rebirth.

[15:11]

And the story goes that Gautama wandered in the wilderness for six years, practicing with various teachers of alternate religious sects and excelling at various meditation techniques that were taught to him. He even spent a number of years practicing extreme asceticism as a way to be free of clinging to the body, as some traditions at the time believed that the body was heavy with karma. Karma had a stickiness to it. And by denying the body, one could lighten one's karma. However, after becoming severely emaciated and exhausted and on the verge of death due to these practices, Gautama abandoned such practices and solved another way. And then, prompted by a childhood memory, he seated himself in meditation under a building tree and was determined not to rise again until he achieved complete understanding and liberation.

[16:15]

central place in the Buddhist tradition is shown by Shakyamuni Buddha's own spiritual awakening, which consisted primarily of his seeing the full range and extent of karma, including that nothing in the universe stands outside of karma's domain. In the Manjimandakaya and Sutta, it describes how once the Buddha's mind was purified or concentrated after he had sat down, his enlightenment unfolded in three phases, what is traditionally called three higher knowledges. And these knowledges each eventually served as the foundations for his particular view and teaching of karma. So first he had a recollection of his manifold past lives in their various modes. And including it said, such details as his name in each of his lives,

[17:28]

the clans, the family he was part of, his various appearances that he took, the food he ate, his experiences of pleasure and pain, and how his life ended in each of these hundreds of thousands of incarnations. So he had that much detail, recollection. And this recollection was then followed by a second vision, that of countless other beings who, like him, were also enduring the cycle of transmigration. Again, that cycle of transmigration is this process in which we are repeatedly born in the world over and over. And this particular insight allowed Gautama to observe how karma, or one's actions, determines the circumstances of their rebirth. But what the Buddha essentially gained through his second knowledge was an understanding of the chain of dependent origination.

[18:32]

How it is that our volitional actions are what spin the wheel of samsara for us. So he gained knowledge into the dynamics of how karma in conjunction with the basic defilements of the enos and craving brings about rebirth. And it was his second insight into the truth of cause and effect that directed his third insight which was that one state of mind when committing an action of this one's views and one's intentions significantly influenced the results of the action so in other words one's right and wrong views are intimately related to their behavior and to the repercussions of their actions and it was This process of thinking that thus led Gautama to observe within his own mind how particular views led to distress and suffering of dukkha.

[19:35]

And when he stopped these views, his distress and suffering stopped. And the most distressing, harmful view of all, Gautama noticed, was the identification of one's self. with one's body, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. In other words, the five skandhas. Bhatma realized that even the concept of an independent autonomous I that we so clearly cherish is nothing but the product of karmic forces. Anjantan Saro, in commenting on the Buddha's insight into the three knowledges, said that this last insight led to, this second insight led to Gautama, concerning the possibility that karma was primarily a mental process, rather than a physical one, which traditionally the Hindu belief was more of that line.

[20:40]

Therefore, Gautama used his own mind as, you will, a laboratory. And so to study the mental phenomena, in his mind, that led to negative karma. and therefore unfortunate rebirths. And this negative karma was called asavas, which can be translated as fermentations or defatments. So here is a passage of how the Buddha describes his singing into the knowledge, which was his final insight and the one that led to his awakening. And this passage uses dukkha, for suffering unsatisfactory stress. When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the ending of the mental defilements.

[21:45]

I discerned as it was actually present that This is dukkha. This is the origination of dukkha. This is the sensation of dukkha. This is the way leading to the cessation of dukkha. These are defilements. This is the origination of defilements. This is the cessation of defilements. This is the way leading to the cessation of defilements. My heart, thus knowing, The seeing was released from the defilement of sensuality, released from the defilement of becoming, released from the defilement of ignorance. Those are the three taints that were just listed. With release, there was the knowledge released. I discern that birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done.

[22:47]

Another translation of the last line goes, knowledge arose in me and insight. My freedom is certain. This is my last birth. Now there is no rebirth. So the third knowledge is described as the knowledge of the four noble truths. The truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads. to the end of suffering. And tradition, as you recall, has it that the timing of his final insight into the nature of karma and freedom from karma coincided with the appearance of the morning star on the horizon. And at that moment, Gautama woke up, finally resolving his spiritual question and achieving his goal, and thus becoming the awakened one, or Buddha. He was fully liberated from the psychotransmigration and would not be reborn.

[23:55]

Now, according to the Theravada version of the Buddhism enlightenment, as it's recounted in Dhammapada, upon realizing release from samsara, Shakyamuni Buddha is reported to have declared, house filter, you're seen through, You will never again build another house. Your rafters are broken. The ridge pole knocked down. All has returned to the unformed. The mind has come to an end of craving. In the Buddha's expression, we get a sense of what it was that facilitated his insight, that turnkey practice of finally seeing through and letting go of the components that gave rise to a sense of a separate self. And a traditional way to interpret the term house-builder is as representing the 12-fold chain of dependent origination, which we call, again, was the second of the three knowledges that the Buddha had that night.

[25:08]

And the Buddha said that it's the structure of the 12-fold chain of causation that gave rise to the entirety of conditioned existence. the whole mass of suffering. Interestingly, the original meaning of both the Sanskrit and Pali words for karma means to build. So the house builder is that which creates the entire structure of karmic or conditioned human existence. It creates worlds, in other words. And another way we can interpret the term house builder is in a more contemporary sense of manifestation of ego. So the Buddha is claiming that in his awakening, he finally saw the way in which the egoic self continues to build and maintain its house of cards. And the rich whole belief in a separate self

[26:14]

and its rafters of reinforcing habit patterns, with the Buddha's insight, have been shattered. And with that, the entire edifice collapses. All has returned to the unformed, the Buddha said. The mind has come to an end of craving. An awakened being comes to the end of becoming. Such a one, the Buddha said, has come to the end of karma. Of course, however, the energy of the previous karmic impulses as a result may still need to exhaust themselves after one's awakening in such a way that a top, if one stops engaging with it after it's been set into a motion, will keep spinning until the residual force fades and the top finally collapses. Like the house of the self of which the Buddha spoke.

[27:16]

But enlightened beings, the Buddha said, do not generate new karma from their actions. So this is why the Buddha continued to live and act and teach for 45 years after his enlightenment, compassionately sharing his understanding with others. And he said that he taught one thing, the only one thing, the nature of suffering and the cessation of suffering. And thus he formulated his teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, so that people themselves could find a way to realization. I hope you found this detailed view of the specific insights on the nature of karma that led to Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening interesting and helpful. Sometimes I had read them and I could see how this whole process of studying karma really helped to bring to him his profound change of mind and understanding.

[28:32]

So for the remainder of my talk, I'd like to briefly say a few things in regard to how we ourselves might work with karma and go beyond or end karma. in the light of the Buddha's presentation of the path out of samsara. As you recall, I had hoped to speak to this in our last class before sishin, but we ran out of time discussing collective karma, so I promised I'd try to weave this in during sishin. The fear is a very abbreviated version. I'm sorry, I don't have any slides to go with it. You can just kind of project them onto the screen in your mind, whatever you visualize, let's say, So, use the blue background and the white lettering, please. And you can add whatever images you'd like. So, understanding karma, as well as rebirth and transmigration, as it was originally presented by the Buddha, and in the context of his formulation of Four Noble Truth, brings insight and clarity, particularly to the equal path.

[29:44]

which is the fourth of the Four Noble Truths. And the Eightfold Path is comprised, as you may know, you may recall, entirely of wholesome factors. Right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. And this practice derives, therefore, from the power of karma to create wholesome results from wholesome states. So looking at the Eightfold Path, three of the factors of the path are related to ethical conduct, the sila. Right speech, right action, and right livelihood. And these three factors are based on not doing unskillful action. And then that five other factors have to do with wisdom and meditation. So wisdom of prajna consists of right view, which means essentially to understand the formidable truth as well as having a non-discriminating awareness of cause and effect.

[30:54]

And right intention, sometimes called right aspiration, which entails the intentions of free, actually, renunciation, meaning renouncing what is unnecessary or unskillful, as well as the intention of loving-kindness and compassion. And then there's the pillar of meditation, samadhi, which entails right effort. We talked about right effort very briefly in class to guard against and abandon unwholesome mind and behavioral states and develop and maintain wholesome states. And then there is right mindfulness, which pertains to noticing our experience of body, feeling tone, mind states, and dharmic principles. And then finally we have right concentration, which means to abide in states of strong concentration or jhanas. And these five factors pertain to the purification of the mind.

[32:01]

And the Buddha taught that by following the Eightfold Path, you will change the direction of your life by changing your intentional actions and your reactions. And so the path is a frame for clearly understanding, seeing your actions, reactions, and the unfolding of karma. And your actions and reactions change as your thoughts change, as your thoughts become more so-called virtuous, and your mind becomes less distracted, and your wisdom deepens. So by practicing according to the Eightfold Noble Path, unwholesome desire and self-grasping have no channel through which to function. And because of that, they're eliminated. And so the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion do not rise. With no desire, greed, hatred, or delusion, there's no karma.

[33:06]

With no karma, there are no karma results to bind the mind. With no karma to bind the mind, there emerges the state of clarity, which transcends suffering. The mind, which was once chained to it, jerked about by desire and self-grasping, comes with one that is guided by wisdom and directs actions independently of the ego's influence. An awakened mind settled in equanimity will produce no additional karma. And as no karma is created, residual karma, past karma, will simply ripen and fall away until complete liberation and freedom are realized. So through wholehearted engagement with the Eightfold Path,

[34:09]

we can take actions that directly influence the unfolding of our karma and incline our karma towards developing a life of lasting peace and happiness. Now, according to the Buddha, there are two versions of the Eightfold Path. One that includes the three taints and one without the three taints. So again, the three taints are the taint of sensual desire, the taint of of being or becoming, and the taint of ignorance. Taints are essentially a stain or coloring that comes from the perception of a separate self. And the Buddha said that with the arising of ignorance, on which the sense of a separate self depends, there is the arising of the taints. And with the cessation of ignorance, there is the cessation of the taints. And he also said that the way leading to the cessation of tanes via the Eightfold Noble Path is via the Eightfold Noble Path itself.

[35:14]

And while the Eightfold Path with tanes is good, it's still with attachments. The Eightfold Path without tanes is said to be the Noble Path. So in other words, we've got two primary paths or streams for working within any karma. The first stream entails using karma to end karma, and the second stream entails not creating any karma at all. And the first stream of right action of using karma to end karma means using volitional or intentional actions in such a way that we intentionally refrain from creating unwholesome karma altogether. And instead, direct our mindful efforts toward creating only good or wholesome karma. And so in the Buddha's perspective, reframing is itself a wholesome action. And what this means is that it's possible not to have a firm conviction in the principle of karma.

[36:24]

You don't have to believe in the principle of karma, right? And you can still follow the Buddhist path and gain positive results from the various practices you take up. For instance, one can pursue mindfulness practice for the benefit of balance, quality and peace that it gives your daily life, or for the sake of bringing the mind to the present for the purpose of having spontaneity and going with the flow. And the full practice of the path, however, is a skillful diverting of the flow of the mind from its habitual karmic streams to the stream of what's called unbinding. The Buddha said that this kind of practice requires a willingness to cultivate right action or right karma. And right action isn't so much a matter of not doing something, particularly something harmful. It's more about seeing how you do it when it does happen.

[37:26]

So you don't repeat the causes and conditions for that harmful, unscathful action going forward. And the Buddha spoke of two kinds of right action, two kinds of right karma. First is the right action, which is beneficial, meritorious, which means karma pala, has karma fruits. And it comes back to the source of the right action. and is tainted so it's tainted by having an actor by having an individual person that thinks she has the power to act on her own so the taint is that the conceit of there being an autonomous independent self and the second kind of action is action which is in a sense not meritorious because it's not karma which is normal It's liberating, right?

[38:30]

It's the full. And it doesn't have fruit that comes back to the author because there isn't an author. It's not tainted by having a power source or a session. In other words, living, a living being can act and have it not be karma. So the first kind of right action, the right karma, has a self in it. This is the karma which creates worlds. It's world-making karma. The other karma, the one without the conceit of a self, liberates worlds. It's not really karma. This kind of action is called right action, or the super-mundane type, the type that is world-unmaking. the sense of unmaking the bondage quality of the world, transforming worlds towards freedom rather than reinforcing the bondage.

[39:35]

And another way to say this is that karma with taints, the taints of desire becoming an ignorance, is still habit-forming, while karma without taints is not habit-forming. Kabhyam Rinpoche explains that good karma done properly, created properly, is not habit-forming. It is not habit-formed because it is spontaneous, arising from a mentality where ego is not central. Habit-forming activities issue from ego obsession. So when we rest the ego a little and bypass the me-me-me thinking, we become more outwardly directed and more outwardly engaged. All this relates back to Buddhism's basic core, which is the problem of ego. It suggests that we are wearing an armor of egotism that holds us back from connecting with others and likewise with ourselves.

[40:42]

So non-habit forming essentially means karma doesn't spin us around ever repeating it. compulsive patterns of grasping and clinging, which, as you know, subsequently leads to harmful or unwholesome behaviors. So we don't end up fabricating eddies or whirlpools of selfing. And the self as we know it is nothing more than a very separate habit. You can think of the self as a meta-habit. It's a vortex of psycho-emotional habit patterns that are self-perpertuating through persistent and volitional energetic impulses. And it's, again, that's the selfing we saw illustrated in the 12-fold chain of causation, right, which depicts essentially this whole process for how the self is fluctuated moment by moment, from rebirth to rebirth over lifetimes. And it's only by interrupting or breaking this cyclical process of selfing that we become free of the spinning of samsara.

[41:53]

And the Buddha instructed us to rely on the Eightfold Path because each step on the path entails wholesome actions that create good karma, while simultaneously not being habit-forming. So in other words, none of the steps of the Eightfold Path revolve around selfing. They do not perpetuate the belief or sense of being a separate self. That is, if they are done correctly. They are to be done with the right perception of anatta, non-self, dependent origination and permanence, with the understanding that we are nothing more than an aggregate of collective conditions arising and dissolving moment to moment, along with the rest of all the phenomena in the universe. So the first stream of the Eightfold Path entails using karma to end karma, using intentional action to produce only wholesome karma.

[42:59]

As for the second primary approach or stream to working with and ending karma, it's through non-action or non-doing. And non-activity is the opposite of karma or volitional activity. It doesn't create karma or karmic residue. And I've spoken now a few times about how the primary form of non-activity or non-karma that we can take up or as a means of ending karma is meditation. And so meditation is a non-activity of body and speech over simply being still and silence. And then there's the non-activity of the mind, directing the mind to be still through shamatha, through stopping and calming the mind's karmic activity. And in meditation, when letting the mind rest, allowing attention of awareness to settle on itself in such a way that it is non-moving. And this non-movingness is how the mind no longer creates karma.

[44:04]

So in meditation, we cease responding to the world habitually. In the Shabha Gedra Sri Manki, Dogen writes, Sitting is the practice of the reality of life. Sitting is non-activity. This is the true form of the self. Outside of this, there is nowhere to search for the Buddha Dharma. So in the non-activity of shikantaza, we allow the non-activity of non-doing to be completely what we are. Which means that the egoic you that always wants to be in control, that wants to do or attain or gain something, is given permission to relax. and to settle into non-doing. It's not creating new karma. And Guy Armstrong says this about non-doing. Non-doing does not mean that one no longer acts.

[45:07]

The true significance of non-doing is that the actions of a fully enlightened being no longer come out of self-centeredness. The self has been seen through so thoroughly that eye-making and mind-making have ceased to operate. So there is no longer an imaginary core that actions have to feed or protect. Without the burden of self, the mind is clear and the heart is open. When a situation presents itself, the response from the enlightened mind comes naturally and immediately without premeditation. Wisdom and loving-kindness have become so well established that they are the intentions from which actions spring. Religion still operates, but without reference to the false sense of self. It is the selfless, spontaneous nature of action that takes it out of the field of karma, leading to future results.

[46:10]

So in other words, if we can be momentarily free from preoccupations of self-centeredness, and of course the suffering that comes with it, then we can start to discover the spontaneous nature of our response to any particular time. We don't have to be perfect, but just trust that our purity of heart and wholehearted intentions will result in beneficial karma. So, to conclude, if You've been part of this Minto Ango and you've been studying karma for almost three months now. And in terms of engaging in wholesome and a wholesome and noble personal collective action, studying karma is central to the Buddha's mission of liberating beings and transforming both inner worlds and outer worlds. And the study of karma compels us to ask, is all my activities

[47:18]

activity that contributes to the co-awakening of all beings is all my activity activity that contributes to the co-awakening of all beings does my activity illuminate for others the freedom that comes with seeing non-self and hence the freedom from suffering when you think intent as thinking is a common contingent on action, you want to act as to make every activity Buddha activity, then this intention is an expression of the Buddha mind seal. So this process of discerning what is and isn't Buddha activity and then practicing action that is in accord with the Buddha way is a process of learning the Buddha way. It's the effort we want to make in practicing the Buddha way.

[48:27]

The effort is to learn about your attention, your karma and your activity and how it's not Buddha activity at certain times. If you see that it's not Buddha activity then work to change it to be Buddha activity. As long as we have the sense of a separate self the study of karma needs to continue. Once we go beyond the conceit of separate self, then the study of karma comes to an end of continuation. As the Buddha said, when a noble disciple thus clearly understands karma, the cause of karma, the variations of karma, the results of karma, the cessation of karma, and the way to the cessation of karma, then they clearly, they then clearly knows the higher life comprising keen wisdom, which is the cessation, cessation of this karma.

[49:37]

So we have come to the end. So I want to thank you again for your patience and your kind attention. And I hope the rest of your sushin is coursing deeply in samadhi of just this with no karmic formations arising. And if they do arise, then seeing through them clearly so they kind of burn off like the fog is now burning off through the sunlight. And that you can more deeply see that it's not necessary to continue perpetuating the sense of a separate self.

[50:39]

That you're heavy of selfing. can begin to slow down and the energy diffuse and the flow of your whole being to join the flow, the entirety of life itself. So you can be flowing with reality which is peaceful, joyful, harmonious with all beings. your flow. Enjoy this life. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information,

[51:42]

Visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[51:48]

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