All right. Well, you missed everything that would contextualize this. I think we'll be able to jump in and hopefully find something beneficial together. I just say again, it feels so good to be here. I'm so grateful for all that you're doing. And I'm just going to jump in today. So I've been talking about Vasubandhu's 30 verses. I kind of had this plan when I arrived to talk about general talk first day and then seven verses each day, but that's not going to happen, changing my tune, because I only got to verse four last time, which I think is fine because what's happening is I'm kind of realizing what material seems to have the most juice for this particular situation. So I probably am going to be concentrating quite a bit on the material material, about verse 7 through 14, so both today and maybe tomorrow, because the material in the latter half of the 30 verses is much more Mahayana flavor.

[01:14]

So it's like, you're like, ah, we got this down. Okay, maybe not. But anyway, because Yogacara is this kind of integration of early Buddhist practice, In Mahana practice, when I go to a place where people are very involved in Mahana practice, I want to talk about the early Buddha side and vice versa, because their intention is to show the complementary capacities of the two modes of practice in thinking. So, yesterday I was talking about the storehouse consciousness principally, but just this concept that's introduced early in these 30 verses of an an unknowable unknown aspect of our lives which is happening in any given moment which is where all the conditions of our past in terms of feeling states and thinking states are reproducing themselves so they're showing up in the form of habituated activity patterned responses to things and so forth

[02:27]

So this is what he calls originally, in the 30 verses, this is called the ripening of karma. So then, what I'm going to skip over pretty quickly is verses 5-7 where he talks about the manas consciousness, which is the aspect of our experiences, which is the sense that we're a I looking out at things. Which, as I always like to say, probably feels like it's happening right now for most of the people in this room. Although not necessarily. But it probably feels like There's an high looking out at things. That's the manas. I don't want to dwell on the manas. The manas is an innovation of the Yogacara. It's definitely highlighted throughout Yogacara thought that realization is the moment when manas dissolves and we no longer are perceiving like an eye seeing objects. There's just things as it is in the words of somebody you may have heard of.

[03:29]

Things as it is. Without a, I'm seeing things as it is. Ooh, I'm so good at seeing things as it is. Still modest. So anyway, that sounds pretty lofty. I didn't want to dwell there. So I want to move into, as you may recall, for those of you who read it yesterday, in the second verse he says, consciousness has... three aspects. The storehouse consciousness, a manas consciousness, and the six senses. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and mind. And this is where he'll invest a lot of attention. And me too. So, now we're down to what we generally think of as like real life. It's not what we think, real life. There's like sounds, there's stuff there's a body some people think their feelings are real life, some people don't but all of that is what we would normally say is reality I'm not sure the yoga tarot will confirm that this is reality but let's not get into that just yet we're going to say this is basically what we think of as conventional experience

[04:55]

It's the six senses. So having talked about the first, the alaya and then the manas, the storehouse, and the eye consciousness, he moves on. And I'm just going to recite this section. I'm just going to recite this section. So it says, the third, so out of these three elements, the third is the perception of the six senses. which are beneficial, harmful, or neither. They're associated with three kinds of mental factors, universal, specific, and beneficial, as well as the afflictions and secondary afflictions in the three feelings. The universal factors are sense, contact, attention, sensation, perception, and volition. The specific are aspiration, resolve, memory, concentration, and intellection. The beneficial are faith, conscience, humility, lack of desire, aversion, and delusion, energy, tranquility, carefulness, equanimity, and nonviolence.

[06:02]

The afflictions are desire, aversion, delusion, pride, wrong view, and doubt. The secondary afflictions are anger, hatred, hypocrisy, malice, envy, selfishness, deceitfulness, guile, arrogance, harmfulness, lack of conscience and humility, sluggishness, restlessness, Lack of faith, laziness, forgetfulness, carelessness, distraction, and unawareness. Four factors that can be either afflictive or not. Remorse, sleepiness, initial thought, and analysis. So, that's a lot of lists. Wow! Wow! You know, so when I encountered Buddhism, we would just sit around. My teacher, he's puckish. And we would just laugh at all the lists in Indian Buddhist thought. Lists after lists.

[07:03]

And then, you know, we'd read some Suzuki Roshi. It'd be like, oh, groovy. Right? So the passion for lists and matrix systems that is so prevalent in Indian thought is really is enormously reworked and diminished once you get into East Asian Buddhist forms and for a long time I was just like I'd see the list and I'd just be like ha ha ha and this is not just me I actually have a friend who did their own when I was working on this did their own translation of the 30 verses and they sent it to me they said I've done a version of this and they sent me their version it was really cool and when it got to this section with all the lists it just said there are a bunch of lists here laughing They didn't even write it down. They were like, who cares? And I felt this way. When I first encountered this text, I was like, God, okay, let's get to the meaty stuff. But as I was studying this, I had a blinding flash of the obvious after years of working with Yogacara material.

[08:11]

So Vasubandhu says there's... Three things happening in experience. One of them you can't know. It's this unconscious processing that's producing your tendencies. Another is the sense you're and I looking at things. And the other one is all these senses. And then it gives you a list about what's in those senses. And if you look at those lists, 80% of the contents have an emotional valence. So, my thinking is Vasudandhu thinks that we should spend 80% of our attentional energy paying attention to the emotional states that condition our action. Why? Because Buddha says karma is intention. As one intends, one does acts. Intention, as I was saying yesterday, is these generally unknown, very brief, emotional and cognitive things that are happening within your experience.

[09:15]

We don't look at those. We look out there. Usually. So Vasubandhu is saying, yeah, well, there's thoughts. That would be in the category of the universal factors perception. So there's a list of like 80 things. One of them is words. The word part of your consciousness. Pay attention to that, like 3%. Good luck. So I realize like this text appears so like kind of dry, Vasubanu is like a philosopher. What he's talking about is like, if you're going to pay attention to specific things, you should be paying attention to the emotional parts of experience. Things like anger, hatred, malice, envy, Tranquility, energy, nonviolence, non-desire, humility.

[10:16]

So some of these you might say emotion isn't quite the right word for it. And that's a very reasonable claim. So I'm trying to find a way to frame this that makes the most sense. I mean, all of them are clearly intended to be intentional. within the Buddhist definition of karma. Karma is intention. In another text called The Treatise on the Five Agreements by Vasubandhi, he very specifically says, these are all formations. Formation is where your intentional energy is living most distinctly in your being. But the thing is, to me, I got to have a personal access book. What does this mean for me? It means I should know when I'm trying to... I should know when I'm angry. And the thing is, well, yeah, of course, that's good. But when you're angry, usually you don't know you're angry. You just know someone else is a dick.

[11:19]

So what the second half of the 30 verses will be about is about how we dwell. We always want to dwell in the projection. So I want to believe the story that all this mental and generally unconscious mental and emotional processing is constructing and just be like, that's the truth and that's going to help me manipulate the situation so I can feel a different way. That's the way human beings are conditioned. But this is very limiting. It's very limiting. So... Now, one thing that can happen when a person gets up and starts talking about anger is, especially a person with a lot of privilege, like me, privilege from being white, privilege from being male, is that people go, what do you know about anger?

[12:27]

I have a real reason to be angry. And to that, anyone who's feeling that, I just say, I bow to you And I trust you. Trust you to know your way. But in talking about this, the point is not that, and I'm dwelling on anger for the moment, it's not that anger is bad. It's that it's an affliction. It's painful. So Pastor Bondu doesn't say these things are bad and these are good. He says these are beneficial and these are afflicted. Now, it's true that I translate these, and when you go to East Asia and you see the same list, it will be listed as a list of defilements. And defilement carries a strong moralistic flavor to it. I'm just going to be unequivocal that I think it's more helpful to use the language of affliction and beneficial rather than defilement and undefilement.

[13:29]

Because it's so easy. When we start to look at our emotional states, to become ashamed or protective of them. Yes? That's very interesting.

[14:31]

One of the difficulties in working with these lists is that there's very little outside exegesis from that time to explain what they're talking about. So you end up having to do some extrapolating. But what I can say is the list I just included includes both harmfulness and anger as separate phenomena. So the thing is, I memorize these lists. It's cool to memorize them, but I can't recommend it enough. Memorizing texts has been central to Buddhist practice for a long time. So... Go for it. It's awesome. But you probably won't. The lists are problematic in that they're helpful, in that they help us kind of direct our attention to specific things, but they're not so helpful sometimes because we're like, for example, fear is not on the list. Why is that? So... For me, what I recommend is using the list to kind of bring your attention to a range of experience and then use that to develop your own language about your own emotional reality and become sensitive to which ones are afflictive and which are beneficial.

[15:46]

So the language we have here is helpful in that it kind of focuses attention in a way, but it's too limiting, in my opinion. And so we have to kind of do some individual work We're looking at what this is like for us. But finally, some people will be like, I like anger. It makes me feel powerful. It's true. But no one I know can say that it's more pleasant to feel angry than it is to feel just relaxed and kind of in the zone comfortable. So these states are afflictive. And then... Or the ones that are afflictive are afflictive. Some are beneficial. So now I want to talk about karma. Do people still talk about karma? Karma is like a hot rail. Because some people are like, I don't want to talk about that. I think David Loy is like, this is a very harmful concept. Interesting.

[16:48]

So I have a particular question. take that i will talk about karma many people view karma in a lot of different ways it's unbelievably vast topic that means different things throughout thousands of years to different religious and buddhist traditions but i'm going to write this in some very simple basic buddhist teachings buddhist says karma is intention as one intends one does actions so he's saying if you want to unravel the suffering We need to unravel the unconscious things that are driving our behavior. So then, there's a question, how are we going to do that? Especially since Vasco Bandhu, at the beginning of it, because you can't see what's in the storehouse. Its contents are unknown. So, karma is a contention. As one intends, one does acts. In another Pali Canon text, the Buddha says, karma... will not be exhausted until it is directly known.

[17:57]

Karma produced will not be exhausted until it is directly known. So if we use the metaphor of the seeds, so like in a moment where I'm like riding my bike and someone like comes super close to me in their car, and I have, like, this fear response. Actually, I should describe what this could be like. Someone sweeps by me in my corner, and you're like, and, you know, some words come out, and, you know, I'm like, bang on their car as they pass by. Boom. Just happens like that. So, within that moment, there was some physical exterior actions, pretty clear, yelling and banging. But also within the moment, because I've experienced this On a few occasions. There's a fear response. There's an anger response.

[18:59]

Then for me, there's a shame response. I can't believe I said that. I don't even know that person. What was that? So these are the emotional responses. The afflictive emotional states that were in that process that could have been completely ignored. I could have left it and never been like I was pissed. I'd just go home and be like, you can't believe what this... Right? So this practice enables me in that moment sometimes to be like, fear. Anger. Wow. And then maybe there could be no shame response. Why is that possible? Because... karma produced will not be exhausted until it's directly known. What does it mean to directly know karma? So if a seed produces a similar seed, that is to say when I'm angry, I'm just stuck on anger day. You're going to have to live with it. When I'm angry, it's going to make it more likely that I'll get angry later.

[20:04]

This just seems to be true. And this totally... takes away the question of whether you have a reason to be angry or not. It doesn't mean you should never think about whether you have a reason to be angry, but it does remove the question. It just says there's a state of anger, and that's going to make it more likely that you'll be angry later. This is the law of karma. And it just appears evident in my experience. But here's the thing. At the moment that the seed is planted, it... it's just like lingering blatantly, let's not talk about the philosophical implications of that in the storehouse consciousness, and then at some point, something triggers it to fruit again, produces fruit, similar fruit. See, it produces similar fruit. So here's the thing. When it produces fruit, that anger that I experience when people are too close, when I'm on my bike, that anger is there, which had to do with a whole bunch of other things that pissed me off, by the way, in the past. It's not just... Karma's big.

[21:07]

I'm there. If I can see the anger with mindfulness, what happens is the fruit of anger is produced. But instead of unconsciously just producing another seed of anger, I plant a seed of mindfulness. What are the associated qualities of mindfulness? Nonviolence. compassion so in the moment that an angry state is revealed if we can see it as itself not as whatever kind of projection we have its power is exhausted and a seed of awareness is planted unfortunately we have a lot of seeds so maybe like Dang, I don't know. I mean, I was really aware one time when I was sad, and I really noticed it, and I'm still pretty sad.

[22:10]

We carry a lot. As I said yesterday, karma is without discoverable beginning. There's no claim in Buddhism that samsara is small. LAUGHTER There is a claim that you can always do something beneficial. And the claim that Vasubandhu is making from investigating karmic theory and his own experience is that one of the most powerful things you can possibly do at every single moment is to be aware of what is motivating your behavior on an emotional level. I'm curious, a couple of things about the car coming close to my recycling.

[23:14]

So where is the intention playing? Because to me, there's an immediate reaction of self-preservation rather than seeking someone out to yell at them for a reason. To me, to see what the West Farm is involved in a lot like that, where... defending yourself. And you think you are anyway. And it's just like a me and that's it. And then you say about experiencing it directly. What came up to me was more that's it. End of story. There's no stories about the person. I don't talk to my wife or partner or friend. That's the single person you go by too closely. I had to smash them away with my name. The physical experience of the anger from that moment. But Yeah, yeah, that is right.

[24:20]

So I'm talking more from the emotional side right now. If we think of, now one, were you here yesterday? Okay. Well, there's one thing about intention that's kind of, I'm using it in a very technical sense here, so I'm going to say this again for the people who aren't here, because otherwise this is hard to make sense of. Karma is intention. The word intention in this particular context is not the only meaning it has. It has many other meanings. But in this context, it means the infinitesimally brief motivational aspects of our experience that we're both generally unaware of. So this isn't like, I have the intention of being kind. When you say that, there may be like 50,000 intentional seeds which are like about kindness, but there might also be like 37,000 that are about looking good. So this is a layer of emotional reality that's way below just like ideas about intentionality. It's the normally unconscious

[25:23]

Affective, that's another way to put it. Affect rather than emotional, but similar meanings. A layer of experience that's impelling and governing how we view the world. So, but you're absolutely right that then, so I'm talking about, you know, karma is, you got greed, hate, and delusion. So delusion is the thinky part. So yes, not... making up a huge story about it, not going and re-cursing it and re-viewing it helps diminish that as well. So, say for instance, it was like one of these cats, Otis, prey jumped out of the way and he scratched somebody in a dirty way. I mean, how is that? I mean, if there's a way where a human being who's made that cat-like or that animal-like, is that when Otis do that, that is not an intention. to really harm someone, he's just protecting himself, you know?

[26:25]

So, like, if he, um... Yeah, so, I see, that's what you're saying. So, it seems to me like what you're saying is all the somatic unconsciousness that's... All this, like, stored here, the body-mind, that we have no control over. Like, we have no, um... Like, to me, I would say that my intention didn't really, back then, I am no intention of this theory, but that's what it seems to be. Well, so, yeah, so it seems like, to me, It feels like you're rolling, this is just my feeling, you're rolling it into a moral frame. That is to say, it's like one is sort of like a morally neutral thing, and one is like you're trying to do something harmful.

[27:30]

And this actually already is a morally neutral frame, which is to say, it's absolutely true. I personally have both chased people down on my bike and pounded on their window and sworn at them, Many times. And I have also had people almost hit me in a car and been like, wow, everybody's okay. And waved at them and smiled. Because I figured they probably felt kind of freaked out. It's practice. It's practice emerging in my experience. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't dodge out of the way, you know. And a lot of things happen unconsciously, and it's cool. Anyway, lots of people are raising their hands. Is it a matter of noticing your body, like, something you believe? Like, to the breathing room? I mean, at least that's what I do, like, sometimes, like, something you believe.

[28:31]

It's like, your body's telling me. Is it fair to say your body's telling you what your thinking is? Yeah, well, this question is really good because it kind of gets to the meat of the next thing, which is like, what does it mean to be aware of these things? What does that look like? Yeah, yeah. So... I would like to leave behind the question of truth. That comes sort of later. But, so, what does it look like to do this practice? When I was talking about it on the first day, what I said is that, you know, Vasubandhu's coming from, he's trying to bring in early Buddhist mindfulness teaching, which is to say...

[29:33]

very specifically saying, now I'm going to have this list of phenomena, like faith, conscience, humility, lack of desire, aversion, and delusion, energy, tranquility, carefulness, equanimity, and nonviolence, and I'm going to sit here, and I'm going to notice when they arise, and I'm just going to mark it. That's here. I'm going to be aware, and the same thing with anger, malice, sluggishness, just noticing. So having the list that helps you to pay attention to this part of experience, which you're usually going to be inclined to ignore. Most people, some people aren't. People are actually very different in how they process emotions, in my experience. So anyway, that's kind of where he's coming from, but we're probably not going to do that. I don't think that's going to be the practice most people here take up. So what I was talking about is you can just begin to be sensitive to the emotional aspect of your experience, just like you're sensitive to the sound of the creak. To the sound of my voice, to the feeling of your butt in the chair, to the feeling of your knees on your Zabmaton, the invitation of Zen is to be aware of what's here.

[30:41]

Be whole with what's here. But the thing is, it's very possible to be very whole with like the sound and the body, but not actually be very attentive to how you feel. This happens to people. what's happening is we're ignoring one of the most liberative possibilities of our practice so the body is the foundation there are four foundations of mindfulness the first one is the body so the body is the foundation of the foundation and then when you come to zen our practice is like what breath and posture it sounds like it's body so wow amazing this is here amazing anyway there's a lot of talk now uh in buddhist circles and also now more psychologists really like to talk about how emotion lives in the body and this is very uh very real to me you know like when i'm uh sad i can feel like my energy level drops when i'm worried i can feel churning here

[31:54]

When I have shame, I always have a burning pain that runs down the inside of my left shoulder. How did that happen? I don't know. All I know is it happens. But the thing is, according to Buddhist psychology, according to Vasubandhu, and according to my experience and the experience of a lot of people I really love, your emotions exist beyond just physical manifestations in the body. and beyond the flavor of your thinking. So it is true that when you're worried, there's a type of thinking that is a kind of a worried kind of thinking. We probably all know this. And it's true that if we become sensitive to the body through these practices, we'll notice physical sensations that are associated with emotional states. But it's also true that the emotional states have their own somethingness here. And it's very weird.

[32:56]

So, like, if I'm a smaller group, what I usually do at this point is I just go, everyone go around and say, how do you feel? And most people can say, I feel happy, I feel bored, I feel agitated, I feel calm. But then, if I say, let's sit for 20 minutes and just focus your attention on how you feel, it's very weird. Where is it? What is it doing? It's there, but it's very hard to detect quite what it is. That's why Vasubandhu gave us his big list, because it's kind of hard to bring our attention to it. So he gives us names that can kind of help. So we start to be like, oh yeah, I heard that talk, and someone said energy is beneficial. And you could be doing your work, and you feel energy, and you feel like, wow, I feel... This is cool. And then maybe, I'll bet there was an opposite in there, which there is sluggishness.

[33:59]

And then you're like, supposed to be, you know, you're in the kitchen and you're like, oh, sluggishness. It's not that this carrot sucks. Sluggishness. So this is about sensitivity. If you're like, this is weird. Let me say, do you care about other people? When someone you love comes and they are carrying something heavy, do you want to be present to how they feel? Wouldn't it be cool to do that with yourself? Wouldn't that be cool? I saw other hands over here. Yeah, go ahead. But they're also saying that we're generally unconscious about being with this. There's thousands of language things that there are behaviors.

[35:03]

And like you said earlier, it feels like it's this moment against infinity. So how can I Well, the first beneficial factor here is faith. Faith is a word that for some people is very evocative of something wonderful and makes other people want to get underneath the table. But there's two principle kinds of faith. Early Buddhism emphasizes a simple faith. You can do something liberative in every single moment. That's the principal faith of early Buddhist thought. The principal faith of Mahayana is that this moment is complete. Prajnaparamita. This moment, it's worth it.

[36:09]

We're learning to trust that it really matters to know what's this part of our life. in all this part of our life. And like I say, for some people, there might be people who are like, why is this complicated? I know how I feel. Really, some people are very sensitive to how they feel. They have a language for it. Other people are like, what? And it's all cool. None of them makes you better or worse than somebody else. But my invitation here is just let this be an unfolding path of knowing what it is to be human. Through your own experience. Just sensitivity to whatever that part of your experience is. You're not going to catch it. You had your hand up, and then I'll come to you. So, basically two things. One is an interest in how vast you're going to do it. I think we go. This is where you describe the bicycle and the car instead of the cat. Do you think of it?

[37:13]

Yeah. And I'm wondering, like, how do you feel about that, if that was going to happen? And then that second line is in philosophy, the concepts of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and how those combine. And I'm wondering if that's where Bonder kind of looked at those states, because dreaming is also a way of getting in contact with the humans, if you're not aware of them, as this culture brings, this is real life. and everything else isn't. So, retraining yourself and wondering if you talked about Jews or the Awakening State or the Geek State. Because according to some Indian philosophers, if those are under balance in some way, then there's going to be a disappointment. They wouldn't need to address that. Yeah. In short, yes. But to Ferb's question, Ego, I'm actually not that knowledgeable about Western psychology, but basically if the ego is the sense of a governing self, that's kind of like the manas, probably plus a lot of layers of thoughts about itself.

[38:27]

So that'd be manas plus a lot of perceptions. I'm not sure. But, you know, this is Buddhism, so it really is about sort of dissolving or seeing through that. as opposed to a Western and Freudian psychological model, like sort of shoring up in strength of the ego. At the same time, we are looking to heal the patterns of emotional distress that happen to us and heal the unhelpful cognitive patterns that are associated with being human. But I don't think it quite fits in the same framework as like a Western ego. There's some kind of overlap. But they're kind of different things, I think. I don't know if that's a very helpful response, but I'm not very knowledgeable on that. Now, as to dreaming, sleeping, and waking, these are addressed very specifically in this particular text. Very interesting to yoga charns because they want to talk about experience complete. So what I'm not talking about here is they have stuff like they address this meditation state lots of people were attaining called the Naroda Samapati, where it's like there's nothing.

[39:33]

There's no... ego state. There's no sensory perception whatsoever. And people will be like, I was just sitting here, I woke up, and nothing happened. And people will be like, how long was it? Three days. So they're like, how does that work? In fact, one of the reasons you have Yoga Chara is to try and explain continuity of self when people have this kind of experience. Or as it says later on, thought consciousness occurs at all times except in unconsciousness affected by drugs, the two thought-free meditation states, and thought-free sleep. So, basically, yes. There's not any talk in here about balance. But what I will say is, dreaming, you're alive! You know what I mean? Like, when you're dreaming and you suffer, you're still suffering. And you know what sucks? People go, actually, I don't know, I have people who love me, like, you know, if I wake up and I have a terrible dream, my wife is like,

[40:35]

Are you okay? That sucks. You can understand how to be compassionate. So when I go to the next section of this text and I say life is like a dream, it's not that it doesn't matter. It really matters. Pain matters. As to the degree to which you can practice while dreaming, that's of more interest to the Tibetans. But the practice does kind of emerge out of the ground that's laid by Yogacara texts, I think. Can I go back here and let you? Yeah. Yeah. And some people find it. And for me, I find it a little difficult to do something. I feel like that's a little bit.

[41:36]

Well, one way, one simple thing is just say when you're having, like your mind is just doing something nutty. Probably happens. Wow. See, use the foundation of mindfulness. Oh, we're using our practice. Sorry. Zen teachers in the room. So use the body as a grounding. So, boom. So that can help you to kind of let, there may be a cessation of thought for a few seconds. It does happen. In that moment, as you come into the body, then it's just like, to me, it feels like it may be lifting your gaze to how you feel. It's still there. You know what I mean? It's not like when you're just super envious and you're like, God, why did... Why aren't they getting, everyone's paying attention to them, and like, no, I'm pretty cool, too. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

[42:38]

And then you can come in and be like, okay, I feel this. And you'd be like, oh, the envy is still there. You can feel it. It doesn't just evaporate. Is that helpful? Yeah, it is. I guess, like, I don't know, when you said, like, some people have words for their feelings, and some people don't, and it's like, good luck. I want to talk about that briefly, and then I'm going to come over here, which is words for it. Okay, so Basu Bandung gives us a vocabulary for it. So he's trying to use words to help direct our attention to something, because we're human beings, right? And that is helpful to me, because there's things I wouldn't have really thought of as being... You know, forgetfulness, sometimes I think that's kind of cute. I'm like, you know, it doesn't really help them to be forgetful. I mean, it's all right, but it doesn't help.

[43:39]

So I can be like, oh, I want to be attentive. And, you know, it's not bad if I'm forgetful. I just want to notice. But, so anyway, so it gives us words, and words really matter. And you need more words than Vasubandhu gives you. And you should use your words. So you should... I'm saying should now. I invite you, I invite you to talk to people about how you feel, talk to yourself about how you feel. So here's the thing. I can say, I can't believe you said that to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and really, it doesn't make any sense. Or I can be like, you know, I feel really frustrated. And, you know, I had that conversation. So I have friends I can do this with where I can just outline the triggering event And then I can process how I feel about it for 15 minutes. It's awesome because I'm directing my attention to the direct results of the karma. I'm still hovering on the surface of it, but it moves my awareness into what the real thing is, that driving behavior.

[44:47]

So it's not total mindfulness of the emotional states, but I'll notice it because I have to think about it. I have to kind of direct, what is it I'm feeling? So then I need a developed vocabulary to talk about it. So like I used to go, okay, so I've been like kajillions of hours of therapy and recovery work because I'm a recovering addict and alcoholic. So I used to, it's always men's group. You sit around a group of men, maybe some men will recognize this. They may do this with women too, but I heard it was mostly for the men. You'd have a list of feelings on the board, on the wall. And the guys would be talking and the counselor would be like, we need to know how you feel. And they'd be like, what's that mean? They'd be like, I feel like he's a jerk. And they'd be like, no, no, no. Look at the board and pick a feeling off the wall. And they'd be like, irritated. We need help. So Vasubandhu's doing the same thing. He's trying to give us a vocabulary that can move attention

[45:50]

to something much more intimate, because we want to go beyond the vocabulary. The vocabulary is the invitation you want to develop that, but the real point is to be real intimate. Where the most power you have, and I'll bet everyone here kind of knows this, is that moment where you can just be like, this intense feeling is here, it's the fourth day of session, and I can take it. I don't have to do anything automatically because of it, I have the power to choose to remain here in awareness. That's real power. Okay, so you had your hand. Yes. As you're talking, how I'm beginning to think, I saw something that belongs to this entity here. And I'm kind of curious about emotion is something that's not contained, even though it's very, you know, somatic in this body. that, um, there are things like sympathetic joy and empathy and hysteria and triggers and, you know, emotional life is something that there's so many Zen stories where some of it comes up lightly because it pebbles at bamboo or something, but it's this that is Sangha.

[47:10]

And, um, uh, so I'm very curious about, um, emotion is something that, um, Yeah, so Thich Nhat Hanh, he makes this whole thing about communal seeds. I haven't been able to figure out where he's getting that besides his own profound wisdom. like in terms of studying, because he's talked about it when he's talking about yoga chair. But the thing is, what we'll see in the next 30 verses, everything is everybody's. So karma is not like, this is my little deal. This is my little... Everything arrives in this moment. So what this is presenting is that we don't really know what's happening here. But we have a...

[48:12]

image of it that's constructed by our habits of mind and emotion and within that we have the opportunity to do something liberative and so the conditions that created that they're not like attached to a an individual uh they're they are you know systemic and that means that the liberative action you do does not it's not like Oh yeah, I'll be fine. I don't care about you guys. I'm just going to get over this hump of all this rage that I have and then I'll be cool. Obviously it helps everyone else if you're less rageful. So the moment appears to be individual, but that's just basically a conditioning of our consciousness to make this seem like it's an individual thing. It's always universal. I want to say something though. Because I touched on one of those things. It's like those danger zones. Back to this anger thing.

[49:15]

People will be like, I'm angry for a reason. I bow to you. That is true. For a lot of reasons. That's not bad. But when people want to say, I'm motivated to do a lot of good things by anger. And that may well be true. But it is not supported by this body of thought. So what we're saying is not that anger is bad, but that it's painful. And what this is saying is that you can heal it, and you can do that liberative work, and it doesn't have to be driven by something that's painful for you. You can put something else into the system. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking, talking about mindfulness is putting me in mind of a quotation from Audre Lorde. I don't know if you know Audre Lorde. She's a womanist poet and essayist.

[50:19]

And she said, "...the quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has a direct bearing on the product which we live and on the changes we hope to bring about through those lives." quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives as a direct bearing on the product which we live and on the changes we hope to bring about so she too is bringing realizing we want to look we want to look in a loving way we want to heal this so that what comes out is healing I think I hope someone else had a hand up no Yes. I listen to God a lot. Vaguely. He talks about, like, when you see something, sometimes judge it.

[51:21]

Because it's like you're coming into that door. It's like yourself. You know? And so when you notice yourself, you know... being a career or something, or whatever, an issue that comes up in the other story. Um, isn't it, it's like, kind of like a galaxy, can you look between me, sharing the concern? Yes. Because, the thing is, is I do want to be loving to myself, but I want, I don't want to be so, you know, like, it's like, it's like, it's, it's, it's like, holding on to it, but not holding on to it too tight. But I was curious, what we talked about is I've noticed that when I noticed that stuff fell on many layers, too. It's like kind of the positive stuff that I thought to look, to feel it when I thought of the system, because in many different ways, it's called .

[52:30]

And then also, like MIB, Right. Well, let me just say, like, in the context of what I'm teaching here, this is rooted in mindfulness. And what I think a simple way to think of it is mindfulness is discerning, but nonjudgmental. Mindfulness is discerning, so it does go. That's harmful. Yeah. I know it. It makes distinctions. So it's not a distinctionless awareness, which is why it's not very zen. But it's helpful. We're going to make distinctions. So discerning means it's not just like accept everything. I don't recommend you accept everything. There's a lot of things in the world that we should be jumping into action to help people. There's enormous suffering. I do not talk about acceptance. I talk about agency.

[53:30]

But agency not just like running off to do everything that you're impelled to do, but an agency that's rooted in a discerning, non-judgmental awareness. So the word judgmental has a negative connotation. The word discernment doesn't. I mean, it's a language game. So it's not about not making any distinctions. but the quality of light by which we look at ourselves. She says scrutinize. That's discerning. We are to discern, but to do it in a nonjudgmental way. So as we see that the quality of that discernment becomes an attacking, which will happen, then what we can do is we can bring that quality into awareness. So you see that emotional balances move into the quality of awareness. And then they can be moved as objects of awareness. It's subtle. Yeah, well, we're never... But you disidentify.

[54:32]

Yes, yes, yes. Whoa! Holy moly, you guys have interesting questions. I think it's because Vasubandhu posed good questions for all of us to investigate. Um... Well, this process is something I'm very grateful to have with you. I'm going to be here for a couple more days. I think we may stay in this material a little bit, but then move on to some other realms of Asubandi's deep well of wisdom. So, thank you. with us to save them. Do there is a desire in us alone?

[55:38]

I, our spirit, then die in us around us. Thank you, Ben. Excuse me, I just want to say one more time.

[56:02]

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