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 afternoon. Good afternoon. Am I audible? Phil, can you hear me? Let me know if my voice drops. does, and I am working on that. And I know there's like that background there. Well, thank you for coming. There's been a lot of Buddhist activity here this week. It's fun to be a part of it. So this is the one version of the Wheel of Light, a Buddhist teaching about samsaric existence. human, really actually about human existence and how we cycle around in samsara.

[01:06]

But maybe I thought I should, does everybody know what a bodhisattva is? All right. This is, yeah, I can expect that maybe. So there's the cosmology of first of a bodhisattva. And this is a Mahayana version of the teaching. The six realms. Charlie was saying, actually, that in the Abhidham Akosha, there's only five realms. They don't have the Ashuras. So we can wonder about why that was added. You know, like, why, as bodhisattvas, do we need to be conscious of that realm and energy in particular? Or somebody wants to point it out. So, bodhisattvas are beings that vow to continue to cycle in samsara until all beings are liberated. So this is a foundational idea. I'm only going to talk about the kind of the one, two, three inner realms.

[02:12]

I'm not going to talk about this outer ring that is the depiction of the 12-linked chain of causation. But, I know, and it might be just... Is that helpful? This... My cousin gave to me. She lived in Nepal for a number of years and got there. And you can maybe come up and look at it. But Mary Carol led a class on the 12-month chain of causation a number of years ago that you see. If you can ask her about it. It's also a beautiful, subtle teaching that you could do one week per, one month per night. So I wouldn't do it justice today. But just some concepts, so this is like a visual teaching. And I was just saying before, we can engage with this like we can engage with a koan. It's not like, oh, I get this, I know, you can, you can study what each of the pictures are and what they mean and that's a good place to start maybe.

[03:13]

But it's a teaching that we can continue to engage with and can unfold. This is The whole wheel is being held by the feet at the bottom with claws and the claws at the top and the teeth. Well, actually, I've read different versions of this. It's either Mara or it's Yama. And there's a lot of crossover between Mara and Yama. But basically, it's the principle of impermanence. This is the god being of impermanence. This is the dominion of impermanence, samsara. And so then we'll look at the center. So sometimes I feel like this is like tomorrow's belly button. The center, like the navel of samsaric existence is a rooster, a pig, and a snake who are spinning around. They're biting one another's tails. And these are the teachings of, well, we often say greed, hate, and delusion.

[04:15]

But there's some nice, I think, more subtle ways of... unfolding what they are. The rooster is passion or grasping or attachment, and we call that greed in short hand. But I think it's interesting to think of it as, you know, the energy of grasping and attachment. The snake is aggression or aversion or hatred, and the pig is ignorance or indifference or delusion. And one of the things I was reading and preparing for this, they had this really nice idea that all of these energies, the kind of energetic stance of each of these things can have transformative aspects of Krugat. And the same energy, or I think it might be better to think of like a navel within the navel. Maybe below the Greed-Hate Illusion there's actually the energy of Greed is a perversion of

[05:16]

the energy of emptiness, actually, and the way that we're connected, and the way that things are connected. It's just that then, because I think there's something elemental that we feel about how things are empty and thus connected, that then makes us kind of want to possess them. So that energy of hatred or aggression is a perversion of discernment, the kind of energy that cuts through and is clear. Like, that's wrong, for example. And the energy of delusion and ignorance, he was saying, like, a transformed version of that is the kind of spaciousness that allows us to kind of be accommodating, be open-minded. So someday, maybe, maybe someday I'll learn, like, how to draw, and then I'll learn how to paint, and then I'd like to make a version where a subnaval has these... These other things being fundamental. So the fundamental thing would be emptiness and discernment and spaciousness.

[06:23]

But then, you know, you get beings involved, and then there's this coercion in degree A in the loop. And those things, and then, you know, the teaching is, the way they're depicted is they're biting one another's tails. They're like following each other, you know. So I have greed, and then that leads me to... Or actually, maybe often it's like, I have delusion, and it leads me to greed, and it leads me to hatred, and I'll round you up. The next ring outside of that center circle is the fundamental teaching of positive and negative karma. And what it often is depicted as is there's people, and they're kind of falling. And down here, there's this blue demon leading them astray. And then there's people who are kind of heading upward. They're following a monk, and the monk is pointing to a Buddha. He's like, come, come this way. Come into a good corner. But it's important, again, to notice, like, it's a circle.

[07:27]

We get led by the demon, we get led by the monks, and the Buddhas, and we keep going on. When I was reading about that, it made me think of the cartoons where... Do people know these cartoons where there's a devil on one children and an angel on the other? And I think I mentioned this in the talk. I'm not totally sure what all came out. It was definitely in my notes. That if we engage with karma from a, particularly from a Christian standpoint, one can, or I've seen in myself anyway, an overlap of thinking about like sin and with bad karma. And, um, The teaching of karma in Buddhism is not, it's not that context. So bad and good karma just are. And so then I wanted to retroactively look at those cartoons where there was a devil and an angel and be like, cool, it was a teaching of non-duality. We have these, we have these impulses.

[08:31]

And I'll get to that in the human realm, but we have these impulses. We have good and bad impulses, and at any given moment, And we don't even know, actually, what's coming, even ourselves. Anything can happen. Either one could be given it to you. And the fundamental, but for me, the fundamental teaching of karma, you know, I think, especially in California, since I've lived here, people say things like, oh, instant karma, you know, like you're greedy and then your ice cream falls off or whatever. Something bad happens to you because you were just being naughty. That's okay, or it's a little cute. But I think the teaching of karma is really important teaching. It's a fundamental teaching of non-duality, and particularly the duality we make between self and other, or self and world. That when we do harmful action, we suffer. And when we do beneficial action, we benefit. Because we are not two with the world and the people around us.

[09:35]

So, I think it's really, and we might not see that. I think that the Buddha, that's what the Buddha sees. And sometimes we might drift into a state of, in a Buddha's mind, and we do, you can sort of see that. A little bit of a little. But the complicatedness of karma is beyond a human conception. And also we can work with that as a teaching of Namibali. And then I think it's making me think of the video that Linda showed on the weekend, I guess. Linda showed this really, for those of you who weren't hearing this, really interesting video about neuroscience and compassion. And I think we're probably all hearing this in the different realms of pop psychology or contemporary psychology. But these studies, you know, like brain studies that are showing, when we are in states of compassion, it's literally physiologically beneficial. It's health enhancing. I don't have it with me, but I have this great list of very good double-blind studies scientifically done with people doing mental practice.

[10:46]

And it's beneficial for things like sleep apnea, and it reduces the cells that bring on aging, and I think it reduces arrhythmia. Anyways, we're starting to learn this as a human being entity, that our body and mind and heart are connected to our actions. And we're starting to learn this thing about the non-duality of what we do and what comes back to us. And then the next ring out is a depiction of the six realms. And that's mostly what I want to talk about. I think it's really important, or at least for me and what I'm trying to point to today, to understand that this is actually a teaching about human experience. Yeah, so sometimes we can work with this teaching of samsara and on the scale of lifetimes.

[11:51]

So I think that can be useful to sometimes think about. In particular, I think that's useful. if we think about what it means to be born in the human realm, and we can really generate a very... I think, again, we could use a really rational scientific mind and generate a very deep gratitude for the fact that we're in a human body. Like, what are the chances? I don't mean to be too graphic, but I'm just like 80 million sperm, you know? The fact that any one of us happens to be here with the genetics that make us ourselves, is really an unusual event if we just look at it biologically. And the teaching and the cosmology in Buddhism is, maybe people have heard this, the chances of a human lifetime are something like a one-eyed turtle swimming in an ocean putting his head through a ring by chance. So I think thinking about the six realms on that gross term of lifetimes can be helpful.

[12:55]

Maybe, especially if it helps us to be like, oh my God, I've got this precious possibility. I don't want to waste. But we can also work with the six realms as states of being that we occupy, sometimes even momentarily. And I think this is also true for the 12-way chain of causation. Like 12-way chain of causation describes how human life comes about or how any life comes about, but it also could describe how thought comes about in a moment. And we can get really subtle trying to see that all happen. So there's kind of a, we could kind of make a generalization that there are states that are mostly governed by pleasure or positive experiences, which certainly is the God realm or the Deva realm, the one up here. And the Assura realm, although there's lots of difficulty in the jealous God realm. But there is a lot of power in that realm and a lot of material abundance.

[13:56]

Versus the realms like animal realm, hell realm, and hungry ghost realm, where the suffering and the challenges of those realms are so intense that we can't really think clearly. There's not much else going on except the intensity and challenge of that environment. But the human realm kind of sits in the middle of these, where pleasure and pain are always possible. are not necessarily an equal balance, but either one's always possible. So the human realm is a super dynamic place. It's much more dynamic than any other realm. And the energy of the human realm is such that it gets prized in Buddhist cosmology as a place where we can really practice. Our suffering is enough to wake us up, but there's enough supports and pleasure and consciousness that we or kind of material stuff to work with and time for reflection that we can actually study and practice and be devoted to this teaching.

[15:09]

So it's more of that second, the way this teaching is like fractally applicable. So it could be like lifetimes or many lifetimes or it can come down to like a moment. It's more of like how these realms show up in a moment that I want to talk about today. So the God realm is a place of pleasure and bliss. Beings in the God realms do have bodies, but their material needs are just automatically met. So it's a pleasure, a pleasurable situation. One can get trapped there and kind of be like, oh, I'm here forever, and lose track of impermanence, actually, and kind of drift off into a blissful state. Again, if we think of this as a teaching for human beings, I would say when the God realm shows up for you, enjoy. Because something will happen to make you land somewhere else.

[16:14]

And part of his cosmology is that bodhisattvas will sometimes choose to go to the God realm to rest. and relax a little bit before they're taking on a particularly difficult lifetime. This made me think of Tim Ream and there was other people. So Tim was here in the first practice period I did 20 years ago. There was a cadre of frontline activists, including Tim, that would occasionally come around and do practice periods. And it felt like this. Like to rest in Malzahara and then go back out there and get in the trenches. And now coming back to Tassar, like I know it's different when you live here and it's tiring and you're working really hard. But for me, coming back here often, I get a little like, woo, I feel cognizant. Just the sound of the water. The other day I was at the bathhouse and I lay down and I was struck with the absence of any kind of anxiety.

[17:19]

Like I didn't have to be anywhere. The temperature was nice. I was under the mosquito net, so I didn't have to worry about bugs. And I was also really feeling, I didn't have to wear clothes. And, like, there was no, I did not have to worry about social sanction of any kind. Like, I didn't have to explain myself. I didn't have to socially engage with anybody. Like, I just, like, the absence of all of these things that caused some level of anxiety was helpful. And how refreshing it was to spend, like, 20 minutes in that state was very striking to me. And my thought was like, wow, this is very rare. This is very rare to feel this safe and at ease. And I think it really was like, I imagine that's what we got. Or I was there for a little bit. And it really made me feel like, we got to get more people to come. As many people as we can get. Then the next realm, maybe over here, but not totally sure. might have just forgotten the faith.

[18:21]

Like, there's sometimes there's mistakes on Thomas. They forgot that being's over there. Is the jealous God realm. So these are beings with tremendous strength and power. So there's agency and not a feeling of helplessness at all, but, and a lot of, I think, material, or a lot of depictions to like a material wealth. But real consciousness, or either they've been kicked out of the God realm. or they're aware of the god realm, and they're not welcome, and so they're jealous. So when we are in states of judgment, comparing mind, and those kind of things, we need to watch carefully, because what it leads us to, what the jealous god realm are for is conflict and warring, fighting. They try to take on the gods, and I think they always lose, which is another important teaching. Jealousy and preparing will not get us what we want.

[19:21]

But they get stuck. I think that an energy of the Assure realm that's important is that things get done. Sometimes we actually almost like, you know, sometimes you take on almost like an aggressive stance because you're like, I just have to push through this thing. That can be this kind of wealth energy. And then the human realm, if we look at it in a lifetime to lifetime frame, We're in the human realm. But if we look at it in this moment-to-moment frame, we're often not in the human realm. But it's another realm that we can notice the quality itself to show up in. So one of the things that the human realm is characterized by is this kind of equal parts pleasure and pain, or enjoyment and suffering. And the other part is real unpredictability. We don't know what's going to come. We all know this in our relationships. We're going towards somebody that we were expecting them to be warm and that they've had a bad day and they're like, it's not... It's not what I expected.

[20:34]

So we both experience the human realm and we embody it. We too are capable of tremendous beneficial activity and tremendous harm. And this thing of how... Another aspect of the human realm is we're extremely compelled toward one another. And I felt like that was in what the video that Linda was showing as well. Our tendencies toward positive dyadic exchanges, positive interrelational exchanges, are evolutionarily advantageous. So then we think about it like, we are drawn to other human beings, and they are constantly not what we expect. They disagree. And at best, it's lively and dynamic. And at worst, it's like we can never, I was thinking like, it's tiring to be in a human realm. You can't really rest. And our minds are on fire. So our engagement is very, like when we're like, what is this? I want to know more. This is very human realm.

[21:35]

And the human realm, I think, is characterized by dichotomy and dynamic. So like good and evil. And like we're aware of impermanence and then we totally forget. Like this is really a big part of our life. We're clear about things and we're totally... We're really into the Dharma and then we're totally distracted by awesomely engaging things in the world. And this is a kind of, it's also a very karmically dynamic place. All sorts of karma is possible in this state. So, and again, this is why the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are like, please pay attention. Listen to the teaching and we're trying to support you here because maybe more than any other realm, we generate karma here, good or bad. The Buddha, like, so this thing about being really drawn to other beings, one of the things I read was like, well, the Buddha took a human form. That's the only way to teach humans. If you came down as a god, we wouldn't listen in the right way. You know, we'd be like, well, sure, easy for you.

[22:42]

But I think because he took human form as a skillful means because humans learn from other humans' activities. Humans learn from stories of others. And I feel like if I look at this in myself, it's true. That I feel like stories of people overcoming, other people overcoming, move me and inspire me in a way that it wouldn't if it was my human that we were talking about. And again, that energy is so intense that the teaching is we can just, like, we could, if we want, fling ourselves off this wheel. We were very diligent. But we are in a bodhisattva school. So our commitment is to get back on if we happen to do that. As I was thinking about this and just hanging around with the koan of the human realm, one thing I thought of was the writer, Temple Brandon, Do people know her?

[23:43]

So she's a very high-functional autistic woman who kind of can put into words the experience of being autistic. And she talks about, like, she's like, autistic people who need things to be predictable are often averse to other human beings because of the, like, immense unpredictability of other human beings. Like, you don't know anything. So she spends a lot of time, she's an expert on goal line behavior. Because cows are not, like, cows are predictably. Lovely. And another thing that made me think about was the teachings that I've heard maybe millions of times about, like, just this is it and just this and right now. And it recontextualized them for me. I understand the value of turning up in the present, but I started to hear them in terms of thinking about these realms as a real admonition for, like... turn up for the full complexity of what's happening. That these are actually encouraging us to like, if you can try to turn up for this extremely complex reality that is a human reality.

[24:51]

And like just this is it is kind of like, there is plenty right here to work with when we're in human realm. The animal realm, And again, I think it's important to think, like, this isn't describing animals. It's describing the human experience of being in an animal state. Is characterized by fear and appetite. Instinct. So it's not, again, like, it's challenging to be in the animal realm. But there are things that we sometimes need, we need sometimes to go into this animal realm and be a little more basic. Like to kind of shut off our intellectual mind and just eat. Or just sleep. Our habits live more in the realm of animals. When we're in a habit mind, we're more rote. Our learning, what's characterized as an animal realm is that our learning is just functional. It's just about kind of getting our needs met. It's not about expanding our mind.

[25:54]

That's really a human realm thing. Comfort, when we're seeking comfort, this is an animal realm. Okay. Another realm is the hungry ghost realms. This is where our craving and our longing and our dissatisfaction is the primary experience. And it's not just the seeking, it's seeking and never being satisfied. So subtly, this can be something like, I just don't feel right. I can't feel, I just don't feel right. And I think a lot of times, many of us have, or at least for myself, A lot of times there's a subtle hungry ghost realm thing functioning. Nothing making it go away. But grossly, it can look like addiction. Where we're like... And it's so easy again to have compassion for addiction. The effort is to try to feel better.

[26:57]

And over and over again we take in things that are poison. But the sincere effort there is to try to... feel all right. We're trying to like help ourselves and we keep harming ourselves. And then the hell realms, which I mentioned a little bit in the talk, there's lots of teaching about hell realms and there's lots of cosmologies of hell realms. But across a whole bunch of different ones, Chinese or Tibetan and otherwise, there are many of them. So again, like to make a clear distinction between a Christian idea of hell realms. They're multitudinous hell realms. They have many different qualities. It's not just hot, for example. And some of them are freezing cold, and some of them are... Yeah, they have all these... In the Jesus Citrine, there's all these particular areas that get downright nauseated to meet them, because they describe all these various cultures. And again, it's a teaching about the different states of mind we generate for ourselves that then consume us.

[28:00]

And in a hell realm, the suffering is so intense, we can't even generate new karma. We're just surviving. The pain is obscured. It's blinding. And I think when we think about human beings living in places where there's a graphic lack of safety, in war zones or in environments where people, even in the United States, in communities where People are institutionally terrorized. We now know, like, for example, children that live in environments where there's a lot of violence, they can't learn. They can't think about the future. They can't think creatively. Like, it cuts us off from all of these aspects of ourselves. And those are hell. So, in both of these topics, so if we wanted to approach this, Otherwise, we could be like, okay, I get all of that, and I'm just going to go from human.

[29:06]

Next thing, I'm just going to work for the sure realm, God realm, get myself out of here. But bodhisattvas are committed to the recommitment to this cycling. So for us in Zen, our effort is to show up for whatever it is. And to like... investigate and abide there. Like, where am I? And what am I doing here? And what are the qualities of where we are? Maybe if I learn how to draw, I'm not learning how to paint, and I can finally write, make a tonka. I'll do that other thing with the navel. And then maybe instead of like a Buddha in every realm, it'd be nice to put a human in every realm. All of these realms are ours. They are states of human existence. And, you know, there's a teaching in the Ginja Koan, I think it's a little different. If a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it, it won't find its way or its place. That makes me think about how we can engage with these different realms.

[30:07]

So you find yourself in hell. It's very human to be like, I'd rather leave. This is not my thing. I don't like it. But we can try to find the supports that allow us to move around in it. To wonder about like, well, how did I get here? What got me here? Like a compassionate... Inquiry. What got me here? And what is here for me to work with? In the Prajnaparamita, in 8,000 minds, we are encouraged to dwell in intimate dependence, in close and intimate dependence. So with whatever we find ourselves in. And I think there are just like greed, hate, and delusion have roots that have something that we can use, they're tools we can use as bodhisattvas. like spaciousness and discernment and connection. There are things we can use in all these realms. So we find ourselves, again, we find ourselves in a God realm.

[31:08]

We can utilize the rest and restoration there. And we can, don't feel guilty. I don't know about you. But this is something that arises for me, you know, if I'm like, wow, I'm really relaxed. I must be missing something. Okay. Instead, we can engage with the practice like, oh my god, I found myself in a god realm. I'm in a daily realm. Allow myself to take in the restoration. And sometimes we find ourselves in a comparative mind state and in a sure realm. Try to harness that energy. There is stuff there. There's a kind of agency and power there that we can use and turn that into something that's more wise than destructive. And the human realm, I think, has this kind of quality of engagement and dynamic that is alive. It's vital. So when we find ourselves there, when we find ourselves like, I want to know everything, we can appreciate that kind of everything.

[32:14]

And when we find ourselves in the animal realm, we can move in that. We can compassionately... Well, first of all, we can compassionately engage with how we're paying close attention. We're being hyper-vigilant to our environment, but we're paying close attention to our environment. That is a tool for bodhisattva. And we can also ask ourselves, like, what do I need? Like, what is it that I need to feel safe, to feel all right? The Hungry Girls Realm has the quality of seeking that, again, like, if we think of it in terms of addiction, like, So it's that kind of like, I want, I want to go towards, we can use that energy and channel it towards something beneficial. Go for the dark. Boom, it's like upswing, following the motion. And the hell realms, we need to be sure that we're grounding ourselves in the kind of support that we need to turn forward a hell realm. Like don't do it blindly.

[33:17]

Don't think we always should be able, because we're not always able to abide in hell. Only like very high-level bodhisattvas can do this. But every once in a while we find ourselves in the position of maybe being high-level bodhisattvas, or we're supported to be that for a few moments. And if we can abide in and move in our pain, this is the ground of compassion. This is the ground of how we understand other people's experience. So this also has benefit. So I'd say that actually the six realms are a description of like a whole human being and what it means to just be a whole human being. And that there aren't any, some of them are easier to be in maybe and some of them are more familiar. But we can find our way in each one of them and find benefit and utility for our work as bodhisattvas to understand human experience in all these different realms. through a lived experience ourselves.

[34:19]

I think that's all I want to say. Any questions or thoughts? At the beginning you said that you were comparing two schools of thought, and one would not have to achieve the same... Yeah. Which is, can you now say a little bit more about your thoughts on now that being... Well, I just think, I, so that, so the Abhinam Rakosho pre-Dish Mahayana Buddhism, or Bodhisattva schools of Buddhism. Or, or... schools of Buddhism based on this idea of returning and a commitment to returning. I don't know, actually.

[35:23]

I just got this information last night. But I was like, I think it's interesting and curious that somewhere along the way, in that transition, this was added. And I think we can just ponder that. I'm sure there are some scholars that kind of something interesting to say about it. But I think it is an interesting idea that when In making a Bodhisattva teaching, they delineated, they took out from the God realm these jealous gods and made that quality of mind, the comparing mind, the one that judges others and looks at what they have and looks at yourself. Wait, I want what they have. Why do they get that? But that needed to be pulled out and visible so that it's something that we're working and paying attention to. but the history of it I have yet to explore. I thought it was interesting when you said that Buddha appeared in human form or how much that is the same Christian, you know, God appeared in human form.

[36:34]

I was kind of like, yeah, they were going to say that too, but you didn't say that. There's a lot of Christian mythology comes from Buddhist mythology. So I think, I kind of think they got the idea. It came much later. And so these ideas, these ideas were, and those principles, you know. And in fact, like, you have people say, like, they are around the same party. I don't know if that's so important. Some of these principles, though, that for someone to be, yeah, this is, if you were a Christian, this was a teaching that I remember getting. It was pretty subtle and interesting that, you know, God became human so that human beings, and saints also have this feeling like they were human, and yet they, and yet they do something. that that's a relatable teaching for human beings. So it's a skillful meaning to do that. Maybe there are other beings out there who are like, I only want to hear from gods.

[37:35]

That would go in and that would be a skillful meaning to show up as a god. And also I've been thinking that sometimes I run into people who are like in a hell realm, you know, and that's like, Like, maybe I'm in the human realm and I encounter someone and they're so angry or something for no reason, apparently me, and I think, wow, that person's in a hell realm. And then someone else who's like, you're my jet. And I step up and go, oh, yeah, they're in a heavenly realm. So I don't know, that's an interesting thing to me to think about. When we encounter people, we're not all in the same realm. We're encountering each other. That's kind of an interesting metaphysical question. I guess it's not really a place. Well, I think that's the thing. This is a teaching about humanity. Yes, we're encountering one another. And part of the unpredictability is we might all be in different realms. But if we've never been to hell, or we haven't been supported to really experience what that is, we will not respond to that person.

[38:37]

as fully or certainly as compassionately as if we've been there. So I wonder if it's compassionate to join and like if a Bodhisattva can just go to the realm of the person so they can be together, you know, in that realm. Is that compassionate? I think for humans, I would not recommend it. And actually, again, like studies are showing this, that compassion is not to join with somebody in their pain. It's to understand your own pain fully so that you resonate with it. You stand in your own experience. Now this is a little more psychological, but I think it actually applies to people who are interested in being fully selfless. Do not give up to your intactness, your integrity. But again, if we want to care about other people, we need to have a tender and intimate enough relationship with our own suffering that that is a resource we can pull forward when somebody comes up and our hearts are resonating with ourselves. But can you make contact with another person so as to affect them if you're not in this same realm?

[39:44]

That's my question. Well, what's really great about being a Bodhisattva is you're not trying to change it. But you're trying to connect somehow with them, aren't you? You're trying to be intimate and really neat. So wouldn't that mean you have to be in the same... I don't think so. I don't think intimacy depends on being the same. Yes, I guess like an analogy would be parents don't act like children in order to. Right. Yeah, prison. I was talking about identity action. It's talking about social emotions. And the fourth one is Samara Adhata. Some of us would call it identity action. Yeah. Being in the same place, being able to put yourself in another person's shoes. Yeah. That doesn't mean being that person or being their state of mind. Yeah.

[40:45]

Having the skill beneath them. Notice that was practiced that. Yeah. But I think sometimes when you're going to visit somebody in a particular realm, you might know that you're automatically increasing the kind of suffering that you might be exposed to. in a way that kind of suggests that you could be kind of descending into some of that too. I mean, if you want to go on the streets of the Tenderloin and hang out with people who need your help the most, you might find a lot of extra suffering that you're exposed to as you go there, right? And you might find yourself feeling like you're in hell. Yes, but I would say that the sensation that each of us may have is from our own experiences of hell. Like this happens a lot in grief. So like, I mean, if we went to a sad movie, our response to something happening that's sad, external to us is because we have no grief, we have our own lived experience of it, it gets activated.

[41:56]

That's our, and that this is our, this is the treasure actually. Yeah, but other than like the movie, I mean, you go help addicts, you might get punched. Oh, I see it. Yeah. [...] It's yeah. Another, another thing we say for ourselves is that we knowingly and willingly transgress. It's better. We are more skillful when we do it on purpose and we say like, okay, yeah, I'm going to go into this field. Yeah. And, and we are, yeah, I think our activity is more skillful. Like we're like, I am willing to go into a field where there may be some more on. Yeah. But I think, I mean, I think we do, human beings do have the experience of, you know, joining people, of having bad boundaries basically, or having unhealthy boundaries where we really join people in their experience. And it's very rare that skillful action comes when we're lost in something else's experience.

[42:57]

So there's a way that, to me anyway, it's a resonant, a compassionate heart is a resonant heart But it's drawing on my own experience, on my own lived experience. What they basically do is that when we go into difficult situations, at least in my experience, I don't actually know what realm they're in. So when I go into prison to meet the people, I think they see me as coming from the God realm because I'm coming from the free world. But some of them are not in home. Yeah. And sometimes some of them are because of superstances, but sometimes they're actually not enough. You know, I think they're in it. That's a good point. You kind of have to wait and see what realm they actually are in. Yeah. Yeah, and that might be why they pluck the issuers out, that to pay close attention when we look at others and we think we know, you know, or we have expectations, and we have a bearing mind, we don't actually know.

[44:02]

We don't even really know what's happening for us a lot of the time. Or we can't see what the next thing is coming. I found it really helpful when you said how unpredictable humans are. I forget sometimes. And we are. And we are. Even to ourselves. This conversation is helping me to see how our projections are bad vampics. I think they can be. I think, yeah, I think projections and expectations are often lead to a road of unskillfulness. And so our practice that tells us, like, not knowing is most intimate really supports, like, it doesn't stop the thought from coming, like, oh, I know what's going on for them. But it stops us from believing that so strongly that we're blind to whatever the person is. or whatever they're like, actually, like Galen, like, you know, she showed up in hell and the person's like, I'm not a no. And our, yeah, I feel like our practice, Zen practice is really good for human beings.

[45:09]

It teaches us how to tolerate whatever is coming and get, like, kind of, I feel like it gives us this cliancy, you know, we're like, okay, okay. What is it? And a willingness that anything could be coming. It won't stop our mind from trying. So another very human thing to do is to try to figure out what's coming. A little bit more planning. When you're imagining or imagining other people's experiences, it's very human realm stuff. But we can be like, oh, I'm visiting the human realm. And call the Buddha in. Not knowing. Yeah, Carl. When you're describing stages, I was identifying. One time or another in my life, I think I've been involved with it. And what I was noticing, what we did about that was, like, time's not even in order.

[46:12]

I had a couple of different times, and I think I've been around it, and really, each stage is practicing different. you know, you kind of experience what, you know, you feel a lot of this mess up, you know, and then, and then, you know, you sit back and out on the ground. And in between, there's this, you know, immediate, I didn't quite identify with the dual side, but I think there's this stage, like, like, for instance, when we get out of practice, period, and, you know, you feel that, that air just slipping away. Yeah. Shit, you're wanting to get something through it, and it's like, oh, I'm doing it, absolutely. Shit. kind of like this greedy greedy like that was a little longer you're taking it away from me so for me it's kind of like cycle cycling through you know practicing committed and strong

[47:20]

you know, mindfulness. And then, inevitably, it's sort of like, just kind of like, just sort of using my mind a little bit that we don't work for just like, work for me, whatever. And then, and then, just like, you know, I've been in the cupboard, you know, it's like, kind of like, sort of like, on up the wagon, basically, just trying to slip off and then you get stuck, you know, in the lights, you know, like, Like you were saying, how did I get here? So I'm wondering if there's a kind of hearing in that. So there's what they're seeing in this kind of cycles. Oh, this is just, oh, I'm just in the state of the cycle. I'm in survival mode, which is like one of these early spring, early suffering, the stress of learning how to get off here. But I'm in survival mode. You know, I'm just honoring it. I'll be in human again.

[48:25]

And I'll be in a god realm again. It's held by the god of impermanence. And so is our life. We are in an impermanent context as human beings. So that's a really important teaching. And actually, where is the 12-linked chain of causation? is sequential in a certain sense, like the future of the next thing is being born from the last one. The six realms are not sequential necessarily. The cosmological teaching is like you could end up anywhere depending on karmic circumstances. And I think that one is good too, because if you've ever had a day where you're like, it started off so good, how did it get this bad in an instant? And I think that's another part of teaching. And I feel like, it's too bad there's not, I don't know what the word would be, the correlate for like a non-sextality, just sort of a non-duality. But we can, you can play with that, you know.

[49:26]

The non-separateness of practice period and not practice period. The non-separateness, I do, mostly I practice with lay sanghism, there's always this quality of sashim. It's like midway through and people are like, oh, it's going to end, it's going to end. How do I keep it? How do I keep it? We can practice with the non-duality of sushin and not-sushin. And the non-duality of animal realms are garbage. And that's, in fact, what we're encouraged to do. The Bapolus? Well, it's actually in some skin or some paper. Yeah, so we can't say that. The back? Oh, you're like, this is also teaching. Thank you. Given what you just said about the non-sextality of these realms, I don't think that the cessation of suffering is not possible.

[50:36]

Or any kind of cessation. Sustainably? Yes. That is not possible. The cessation of suffering is an impermanent thing. Or a human being who happens to get themselves in a state of mal-suffering is going to die sometime. So there's no such thing as a sustainable suffering. And particularly not in our school of practice. So we don't bother. Sorry. Did you know? Hang on. I'm sad again. But the cool thing about this is then it becomes really kind of exciting. This is an exciting part, I think. I should get a t-shirt. Santa's dance.

[51:39]

Send us the best. We can do it anywhere. We can do it in hell. We can crush this close internet dependence in that hell and wake up right from there. And so that is the cessation of suffering and it won't last. No, I was kind of dabbling around. But I can tell you a couple of books. There are a couple that are kind of just stood out. Well, one that I just spent a little bit of time with that Chris Forden passed on in Awakening from a Daydream. It's kind of fun, actually. And it's written by, does somebody know David Nickton? He's in the Shambhala tradition. So a student of Trungpa. And he just wanted to... spend time exploring this. And then there's this great lecture by Trungpa in the back about the six months ago.

[52:44]

And Trungpa says this thing I really like. He talks about how this whole thing is describing the compulsive nowness in which the universe occurs. And he says it a number of times. He uses the word compulsive really interestingly. The compulsiveness of samsara, the compulsive nowness that just keeps happening. Oh, God. Now we can't. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[53:36]

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