I was only 51% sure. I put Canada Down. It's a very poor translation. It's from a book which was translated from a modern Japanese translation of Dogen. So it's a translation of a translation. And it's pretty watered down, not very accurate. And a lot of it won't make a great deal of sense to me. And part of that is just because that's what Dogen writes. Part of it is the translation is not at a very high level. Nevertheless, I think if you read it without too much sense of, gee, what is this? What is that? That doesn't make any sense in English or something. Just kind of read it to get the overall sense of the feeling. I think it's useful.

[01:01]

And it gives you, I think you will probably, I don't doubt if I'm right about this, you'll probably at least come away from the text with the feeling that, well, Buddhists certainly don't have an ordinary or conventional idea of what we think, what we feel. Because there's nothing straightforward or simple about what the court has said. It's basically a commentary on the story that I talked about last week in lecture. In the Hatha Rakshatana and the Trinakara, only a three-year-old child, even a three-year-old child does that. So, even though he doesn't mention the story until the end of the chapter, it's really the whole thing is about that. And sho'akumakasau means refrain from all evil. It's the first third of what the three masters said. And it also happens to be the first of the three pure precepts which we are now in.

[02:14]

The third one is a little different. In the list of precepts that I gave you, the third one is benefit all beings, whereas in the sho'akumakasau chapter it's a purified mind. So it's a little different. So, good luck with that. As I said last week, I'll repeat my joke, that it's like trying to translate Hindu's way to the Swahili. From a French translation, at least. Because Dogon creates terminology and words that don't actually exist in Chinese or Japanese. So it's a little different on a new language.

[03:19]

Unfortunately, for this particular chapter, this is the only translation in English that presently exists. Little by little, I've sort of shoveled in, though, which is 95 of these chapters, coming into scholarly translation, but this one could be one of them. Well, I intended today to go on with three treasuries, on to the three precepts. I vow to make the Achiever of All Actions great. So, I vow to live the Enlightenment. I vow to live the Grand Theft Auto. Baker Oshin has fussed around with this, to get rid of the much simpler language that's already original, or simply put, I vow to do good and not to do bad.

[04:27]

Because good and bad are... ...a relatively simple language in present-day English to really give flavor. What it means by bad is compassionate to yourself. So the word bad, as we would put it today, means that we'd like that. And good means... Strictly speaking, the good means that the... ...the magnetic pull of these terms in Buddhism is enlightenment with the mind of the Buddha. And anything which is in that direction, in the direction of liberation, of complete, perfect awakening, is good. And anything which is not in that direction is bad. So, good and bad are not moralistic terms. They are directional. And have to do with a kind of observable effect on your karmic body.

[05:38]

That kind of action which tends to accumulate karmic accretion is bad, unwholesome. And that which tends to move in the direction of more clarity, or removing that clarity, is good. So, the translation that we use is that they tend to be more expressive of meaning. It doesn't just translate to kind of, but also expressive of meaning. Because for us, good and bad, I think the directional focus in Christianity is God, or sin. And has to do with the whole background of original sin, and grace, and humanity, faith, and being, and all that. Which, you know, you might say Buddhism operates more from the standpoint of specific purity.

[06:41]

Of what it means to be a human and how to be a human. And a kind of obscuration of that. The most common metaphor which we find throughout the scriptures. It's that the light is in a totally different universe, or dimension, or world, than the clouds. As you can see from observing the sky and the moon. It's totally different, it's totally unaffected by the clouds. It's in the same universe as the clouds. And this is the metaphor that they took from the Jews. I didn't say clear mind or enlightened mind, it's not. Another kind of mind, like the mind, like the various kinds of states of mind that we experience.

[07:47]

So it's not as though you can experience 35 different states of mind in your life. And enlightened mind is number 36. But rather, it's the fundamental mind that underlies all possible states of mind. Including all possible states of mind. And this is some of the unusual terms of phrase that show up a lot. So it has to do with the fact that the mind that creates bad karma is also, originally, an enlightened mind. It's included. This is a version called Figma. So... Anyway, I wanted to talk today about, more mundanely, what it means, wholesome and unwholesome. In Chinese, the characters for these things pretty much mean good and evil.

[08:52]

But in the original language of Buddhism, the word used means more like healthy and unhealthy. Wholesome and unwholesome are food. Wholesome food and unwholesome food. Food that's spoiled is food that is nourishing and unnourishing. And again, going back to our discussion of the law of karma. This is supposed to be, for Buddhists, an observable phenomenon. At least over the long run. Very much like your physical health is an observable phenomenon. You can observe someone who hasn't taken good care of themselves. You can observe that their body doesn't look good. If they don't look good, they don't feel good. They're a problem. Of course, in the short run, you don't necessarily see it. If somebody spends a day drinking 20 cups of coffee and you tell them that it's unwholesome,

[09:57]

they may shrug and say, well, that's a good answer. You know, a few years now, it's gone. I mean, you can't necessarily prove it in one day. But, if you look at that person in 20 years of doing that, you can observe. You can open somebody's gloves up and look at what their gloves look like. They're black. But you wouldn't necessarily see any effect from one figure. The observable effect is slow accumulation. And karma is supposed to be like that. You accumulate it little by little over a long period of time. And it actually becomes quite substantial. And some Buddhist theorists even posit a kind of subtle yogic body. Not your typical body, exactly, but more like a yogic body that accumulates this. Something like an aura that accumulates means karmic impeachment.

[10:58]

I guess it's a kind of popular thing now about seeing people's auras, so there's something proclaimed to be able to do. Whether or not you see color before you see a person, I think most of us have the experience of getting a kind of feeling from a person, what we used to call a hidden gate vibration. Some people have good vibrations and some people have bad vibrations. This is very much like what Buddhists mean by a subtle body that accumulates karma. You kind of feel it. Some people give you the creeps. You talk to them for five minutes and they think something's really funny about you. Other people just feel very good and they seem very honest and so forth. And human relations depend, a lot more than we admit, on those kinds of feelings about each other. We don't necessarily need to express those things or even consciously aware of it,

[12:04]

but I think we know more than we think about each other. It's harder to conceal your thoughts than we were talking about before. Thoughts are the source of karma. It's harder to conceal your thoughts than one might hope. In most cultures, I think, there's a little more... Maybe America just had a hard time because it was so diverse, so many different languages, cultural groups, that we've had to develop kind of a low-income denominator of communication, which is the English language, I suppose. In ethnically homogeneous cultures, I think that it's worth mentioning that basically you pretty much know what people are thinking. I've been told, I don't know if it's true, but I suppose I read an article that in Arab countries, it's considered customary to look into other person's pupils.

[13:07]

See how they're reacting to what you're saying. Because if your pupils actually do show, if you don't like what's happening, you don't like the hidden skills being promoted, you can push it in and out. And if you do like it, then your pupils widen out. And I've been told, it's said, it's quite hard, but I always thought it was a tough class. We can't do that. We can't do that. But I do know that in Arab countries, it's considered customary to be quite close to people, to talk much closer than we feel comfortable, and look into their eyes. You know, you're talking, but basically you're kind of looking. What's going on? What's the actual human response? So, that kind of subtle response is more at the level of thought. An active thought. Intentional thought. It's karmic thought. And karmic thought actually affects your whole body. You know, we have this idea that thoughts don't count.

[14:12]

It's like this little Lulu comic. For some reason, I've remembered all these years. And if you remember Little Lulu, it was a popular comic when I was a kid. My sister dropped the description. I used to read it. And there's this little rich kid who was one of the characters in the comic. And he lives in a big mansion. And there was this expensive statue that was worth $6,000. And Little Lulu, by mistake, tripped over the brick and broke pieces. And so he says, you owe me $6,000. And she thinks a minute. She says, well, everybody knows zero is not meaning anything, so I only owe you $6,000. She thinks about it a minute. And he says, OK, but you've got to pay me that $6,000. She bamboozled him into it. Anyway, I think that the occidental mind tends to think of thought as kind of like, you know, materialistic.

[15:14]

Because thoughts don't really count. You get away with thought. And what you're thinking is your own private domain. But for Buddha, not only is this not considered true, it's not even considered an accurate observation of how it is. If you know somebody at all well, at least in some general sense, you can tell what's going on. So thoughts do count. And particularly thoughts with a certain muscle or power can actually make you, you know, if you get ill, it can kill you. If the thought doesn't have potency. And you know, in African tribes, if you hear that you've been hexed by somebody in your tribe, you actually start to get sick. And unless something's done, you sometimes die. It was important. One of the priests here, who was a Hindu volunteer in Uganda, actually died. He teached in a high school board,

[16:14]

a tribal board. And one of them would walk up to him with a pail of a baguette. Anyway, strictly speaking, I forgot to go home right away. I just heard that, you know, somebody's done witchcraft on me and I have to go back to my village, Sharma, to rectify it. And if they weren't able to go right away, it was just like this. There you go. And, you know, we think of this as, you know, we have various ways of conditioning. It's not serious. This is just, from a Buddhist standpoint, quite natural. Any thought with enough power or muscle can have a huge effect on you and others. And that of the three kinds of karmic activity, thought, speech, and body, thought is the only one that, in a sense, properly speaking, karmic.

[17:17]

Because thought underlies all three of them. Speech and mind are embodied thought. And again, when we say thought, we don't necessarily mean speech. This is a common problem in our very verbal-oriented culture. We think of thought as some kind of silent speech. But actually, that's almost like a derivative thought, a secondary thought. The primary level of thought is the level of image or feeling. The most powerful kinds of thoughts are almost pre-verbal. Once you verbalize,

[18:18]

it's inwardly or outwardly, it's already at the level of speech. So it's very hard to actually even notice this level of primary karmic thinking. And unless you do meditation, one of the main reasons why we think is to peel away the exterior layers of our inner speech and imagery and begin to be alert enough to notice the arising of thought, which is, although it takes shape very, very quickly, I mean, extremely rapidly, still there's a moment in which thought where it's kind of more in its pure form, pure state, pure love. What's the term articulation? I think we've already learned it's being verbal. If it does come up so fast,

[19:19]

if by the moment you recognize it, the arising, and you've been able to formulate the feeling that it's there, it's articulatable. Usually, but I think if you sit, you get to constantly slow down stuff. You can sometimes experience this remaining at the pre-verbal level. This is the first, there's in traditional yogic system of classification of meditation stages, the first of the eight stages of absorption is when your thinking is thought at the level of just the formulation stage. Then when you go a little deeper, you stop verbal thinking altogether, and you have more just emotional thinking. So, the realm of

[20:19]

unverbalized thinking is not really accessible unless you become fairly adept at meditation practice. And I want to mention today the way in which meditation practice is supposed to be medicinal for reading precepts, helping to follow these precepts. These precepts, these three true precepts, really are the precepts, are the basic precepts. The ten bonds that follow are just a more explicit recommendation in a particular area of these being a little bit too general to be too much healthy. So, the ten prohibitory precepts lay it out in a much more detailed list. Would you say that the three kinds work together? Well, it's on the handout that I gave you.

[21:23]

Do you have the one page list of the precepts? The handout, the first page? Oh, I see. Did you have that? Yeah. Anyway, the one at the bottom is pretty... The one in the middle there where it says I vow to refrain from all actions that create self-harm. Do you have any more of those things? Uh, well... The ten prohibitory precepts. The ten prohibitory precepts. Did they help you? As I mentioned before in the discussion last week, the definitions of these ten are quite explicit. Wholesome, unwholesome

[22:30]

unwholesome action or action that creates self-harm is characterized by one of the three major possibilities which are usually known as greed, hate, and delusion. I prefer desire aversion and confusion. These are the three... These are the three major modes recognizable modes of activated self. These are all inherited from a deep belief or identification

[23:31]

with a fixed uh, self or a state versus a prior conception of its inherent existence. These are ideas. A prior conception of its inherent existence. Prior to what? Uh, prior to what you're doing right now. So it's already there before your actions take place in the function and underlying of what you're doing. In other words, the conception of an inherent existence is not so bad if you just can pick it up and put it down. But if it's underlying your basic mode in the world all the time then it causes these problems. Then these things occur. And they're opposite because they're wholesome. Wholesome activities are non-desire or maybe detachment. Detachment is not a very good word.

[24:34]

I don't know if it works after that. Uh, goodwill or whatever it is. That's an interesting word, isn't it? Goodwill. Goodwill, I think in our language now means, you know, a place to be. A place to be. Yes, goodwill. Goodwill means literally goodwill is a word. It means good intention, goodwill. And goodwill, you know, goodwill for its net is to, uh uh, you know, generate an open feeling. And I would say that's what he's trying to do and wants to do. I'm sure he can make you stay black at night. That's my little comment there. What is detachment? What can you say to detachment? detachmentivity or uh I guess it means

[25:35]

detachment through it makes people feel like sometimes they're giving in to emotions or something like that. It's more like, uh well, yeah even-mindedness or detachmentivity even-mindedness or detachmentivity trying to avoid blackness blackness, you know even-mindedness is better than detachment. You know, in general I'm afraid that my language is developed in such a way that when you want to say something and try to understand you say it in a Latin verse or you say it straight you say it in English I don't know what extra-manager detachment means but even-mindedness is good. It doesn't mean a lack of desire but rather that you're that you're not singling out things in the world with reference to your own selfish needs as a person. You know As I've often said

[26:41]

you go to a party and the difference between going to a party and your whole point of going to a party is to get introduced to somebody to further your own ambitions and selfish ambitions versus going to a party to enjoy the people which is a totally different way of being at a party. If you're at a party in the former manner you have no interest in any of the people except insofar as they can get you closer to where the person you want to meet is standing. Which is not to say that that's necessarily wrong but it's just an example that I've just come to as a clear example of the difference. So again desire means it's not exactly what it means in English it's something much more physiological in a way which is that having set up

[27:45]

in your mind a prior conception of itself and an object outside itself which can be in relationship with itself desire refers and goes to activities in which you want to draw the object closer to you in perspective. So that's why it's sometimes called greed but it's a lot wider than that. Greed is not a very Greed is a slight I think presently in the present parlance it's a slight it's hard to use the word greed seriously I mean we usually use it as a kind of slightly unachieving it's like you're quoting Dickens. Don't be greedy but there's a little bit of a jocular quality it's not actually seriously calling something greedy it's just telling the world it doesn't have much part of I think so I think usually I think greed

[28:46]

is someone has a great deal of force but it's not to just jump a little bit I'm sorry I'm so strongly about that greed is greed Well yes I mean you can use it but I think in polite conversations people avoid it because it is such a problem you don't generally easily accuse somebody of being greedy unless you really mean it and I want to have a term that's a little less charged I mean people use it sort of softly they're not using it it's a very strong word actually the Buddhist idea is a little wider than just greedy because greed is also a very tiny thing it's not just a big huge thing that that you would be excited for but it means in a very small way that you that you operate toward the objects of

[29:46]

the world with reference to itself which you can you know draw things in so it means any relationship to an object which is like that would you repeat that? well I'm trying to it's you know the big the big events of greed are easy to see everybody sees them themselves it's not so hard but it's the small ones that really count in your life because they're the ones you don't see and which you can rationalize usually by a feeling some version of well this is what people do you have to do this I'll be walked over if I don't see this so the uh yeah

[30:47]

this is a video everyone can see it don't know what but so I don't know what it is so I don't know what it is it doesn't matter

[31:47]

so it isn't at That's what I'm trying to get at, that it isn't a matter of your greed if you take more than your fair share. That's really not the point. The point is something much more specific, involved in your perception. That you walk into the world and you're sorting objects in the world in relationship to your desires. Objects do not have equal value for you at all. Now, that includes the area that's part of your fair share as well as what's open. If that's the basic dynamic that you're using to sort the world out, which happens very early. I mean, you're talking about children. This is one of the first things children figure out to do, is they start sorting the world out with reference to themselves, what works, rather than having an even-mindedness with

[32:50]

regard to everything, which children have only because they haven't fully worked out the story of the future. So, this innocent quality that we think children have, not because they're somehow naturally away from me, it's just that they haven't learned about the world enough to figure out how to use things. So, a lot of things for a child remain in this even-minded state until they find out, and then it's not even-minded anymore. So, the first few hours, anyway, they just quite, you know, they're all just repeating. But very quickly, they figure out, oh, this is true, this is what I want, this is what I want, and then they start to cry and wail and all sorts of things. So, in a way, a person who practices that as an adult may have a much purer mind than

[33:52]

a child, even a young child. In fact, children really are very quickly involved in the sorting of the world. So, it has to do with the way you perceive the world based on a very deep sense of relating everything to yourself. I think you have to have a very strong and defined concept of self, because it appears to me that greed extends not just to the attribution mode of saying, you're doing this and you're present, and you're saying that and you're present, but it also has to do with your own self-concept, how you perceive yourself, how you want to project yourself, and then reacting and doing and moving situations and events. So, that concept of your self-move forward, it seems to me that also involves greed in the sense that you're very much holding on to projecting that self-image.

[34:52]

Well, that's more of an adult idea of self. I mean, the Buddhist idea of self goes so deep that even a newborn baby has that, even though they have no what we would call egoic self-image yet. They have the roots of it. These are called roots. They're called mula. Mula means root in India. It's being a root of, you know, I forget the total term, but anyway, these are the roots of, kind of ultimately, the roots of the whole thing. And, of course, as we become adults, they're called... You know, I was hearing a commentary on the radio by... You know, the arch-severite status of kind of commentator on things. He did a commentary on, I guess now they're what's called adult video games.

[36:01]

And he was commenting on the use of the word adult, you know. Basically, you know, in the present day, it's a euphemism for sexual content. It doesn't have anything to do with being an adult at all. It's just, you know, that which we try to prohibit children from being exposed to. It's very bizarre. You can use the word adult. Adult originally meant grown up, you know, or mature. And he described what the content of his video game was just as he put it on radio. It did not sound very adult to me at all. It's a bizarre thing of general custom. He made it terrible. Even mature made that video. The thing about Robin Williams is that, because of the mature content of the content... Him and Sarah Hale are the same show. Well, I don't know. Mature means right. Maybe over-right or rotten. I don't know. I don't know if it's too mature or too rotten. The lesson is, you know, that...

[37:05]

Anyway, these are the... And aversion, aversion is the opposite. What I just described is that, you know, desire. The opposite of that is those things which you sort out to avoid, which you want to be pushed away from. So these are reciprocal. Desire and aversion are reciprocal concepts. They're more like, you know, when you sort, it's like sorting the world into two. Into two, a black and a white. The desire side is in the situation you want to draw in or accumulate, and the aversion side establishes what you want. So this is process. The two things all put together. Aversion is defined as that which is dis-desired. It cannot be done. It cannot be done. So that's all based on knowing what's there.

[38:14]

And having a fairly clear sense of what's out there. And... These really are, you know, reciprocal. And then confusion, which is the third reason, is a rather different, in a different dimension. Which has to do, not so much with objects, but with... How you focus on the objects of the world. And confusion means unfocused. An unfocused quality of consciousness. Both aversion and desire are fairly focused. Sometimes quite intensely focused. And many people, other than yogins, other than people who sit, experience maybe the most focused quality of their lives. So you state this extreme aversion or desire. And yogin often... I get rather fond of quoting that Chinese love story.

[39:19]

Some prince was totally infatuated with some lady waiting in the palace and just dropped notes out of the curtain. You know, waiting behind a pedestal to be able to see her for a moment and stuff. You see, now, that's an example of real, you know, fervor. Now, if somebody can get that fervent about a young lady, you monks have got to be, you know, that's the minimum. You've got to be at least that fervent. You're not any more fervent than some guy you love. But he often would reference the sense that the realms of desire and aversion are actually in a very powerful, concentrated realm, in which you can develop tremendous focus. And there's also a passage in Buddhaghosa, a rather famous passage in which it says that the concentrated power of ill will or aversion is that which makes the murderous knife not miss.

[40:21]

So, you know, the criminal minds are often in a very narrow, clear, very, very concentrated second story, creeping in people's spirits. You can't almost feel the supernatural power of concentration based on, you know, some very greedy, you know, very unwholesome feeling. So, what is known in Buddhist psychology is that these states of mind can be developed in their own narrow spheres to a very, very high degree of focus, which can resemble in concentrated power the focus of evolution. However, it's very interesting that you find in the technical text of Buddhism, which is obviously synthesized, this focus is very, very narrow and not expandable. There's no way to make it grow. If you take away the narrow conditions,

[41:24]

the person has no focus whatsoever. It's totally lost. Whereas the focus of meditation practice, you can expand it. It's very expandable. You can expand it into your whole life. And it has a nurturing quality which grows, which nurtures you and feeds you. So, this is an interesting point. And so often people can be quite successful in their own sphere and very confident and have lots of skill at what they do, but usually if you're with them all day long, you find out that it's very much a narrow place. Oftentimes what they require as compensation is some kind of secret life, which is extremely uncomfortable.

[42:24]

They have to manage the life of animals and compensate the unhealthy quality of the energy which is generated. So, confusion, which is the third unwholesome mood, might be the backwash of all of this, or the weight of it, which is the underlying, even though it's a narrow sphere, there's a certain kind of concentration, the underlying quality is clouded. Because you're not actually seeing them as they are at all. You're seeing them through a veil, or let's say a rope or a glass. There's a very kind of distortion, like seeing things in a funhouse theater. You're not seeing things actively at all. You may be very densely focused on what you're seeing, this thing you desire, this thing you hate,

[43:28]

but you're not seeing it as it is at all. And in particular, in human relations, when we're involved in ill will or desire or lust, we do not see people as they are, as they see themselves. We see them as a projection, always of our own unclarity. And so what we see is not what's there. Well, when you look at it in real terms, which would be an extremely strong concentrated supply, it's almost inherent in our nature that you have to build a case for that supply. So in order to put together the price of your case, you become very single-minded in what you look for. Because I think in the sort of real incident, we need to rationalize our intense supply. And we have nothing to measure this. You can't just dislike something. You have to be able to justify that supply.

[44:29]

So right away, you put yourself in the most not-seeing sense because you're building that case. That's an interesting point. The fact that we need to do that is sort of a proof of rudimentary well-being. It is interesting a lot that military men and so forth, when they speak, they do use euphemistic language, which is something we notice. Why? Why don't they just say, kill? Why don't they just say, bomb? Instead of, of course, a device. Why don't they just say what they mean? Why don't they just say, we want to shred the flesh of the enemy? We don't say that. They have some complicated, more horrible than what they talk about it is, the more they have to do that. So, and you know, they all do it. Even the worst mass killers in history all had their euphemistic language. In fact, it's very a wonderful, in a way, a very educational study of the language

[45:32]

in Nazi Germany, by Louis Steinmeier, who was a survivor of that era, analyzed the way in which the distortion and destruction of German language was necessary in order for the Nazi movement in 1916. And Goebbels was the real genius behind the whole Nazi movement, because he had the intuitive sense that language and image as communication was key to their rise to power. And it's pretty interesting. I think you see it even in the business world. You spend hours agonizing over a report, so you can euphemistically say something that could be taken too offensive if you really wanted to write it the way it is. It's not our whole language. It's our whole society's sort of dizzy side effect, unpleasantness.

[46:34]

Most of the time euphemisms just arise when you're trying to deal with unpleasantness. Or you forget how large your standards are, in a sense, in which you make it as usual and sort of generalize it. But actually, it's possible to cover all your bases and then ask for more support. I saw a show last night, a councilman from Disney who did a show about the new Disney thing, It was called HEDCOT. HEDCOT. Environmental... Prototype City of Somalia. Dan Davis dedicated the entity. And... Of course. And it was a very extensive show.

[47:36]

Big production numbers, the Marine Corps chorusing the America the Beautiful, the Colored Fountains, and the film. And I guess I watched it and all of us were agreeing that the show was quite a terrible show. There was no recognition of the unpleasantness of the world in the underlying concept. Therefore, it had a very little like-ness. There was something quite... The other thing was the 50s. Maybe the 50s was like our era of trying to point out the possibility that one could escape and... You know, maybe the 60s was like... Laughter. What the rest of the world has always known has arrived and I'm sure we can deal with it. I don't know where we are with that now. Anyway, I was struck by the sense that the whole show was one big euphemism. And...

[48:39]

I mean, it showed, for instance, Japan, and it had this little... It had this little village of the world or something, a little section for Japan, a little section for China, a little section for Germany and Italy and it showed all the people in their international dress that they were wearing. And Danny Kaye went through his routine with Japanese accent, German accent... I felt a little sorry for him. And he did... He just does wonderful things. I felt a little bad for him. And... I didn't think that any of it was German or Italian. He did a little gosh show to represent Japan. Anyway... I mean, you might say that this kind of perception is negative, euphemistic perception, that you create a projection of something

[49:41]

negatively or positively and you act on it as though it's real. So, of course, underlying all unwholesome activity is a lack of clarity of perception as to what is actually there. And... this is why you might say Buddhism works. And Buddhism works not by trying to browbeat people into being good, which is a rather futile practice. And the more you browbeat people into being good, the more they should not be good. No, no, when you keep things clear, when you do have a sense of clarity, frequently what you see is such a perspective. And I don't... it hurts. Because when you see things as they really are, there's a wrongness

[50:41]

to that. You must be talking about different sorts of clarity. I think so. Although that's true. I mean, one of the first things you have to be willing to face in practice is to see things at that level. You have to be willing to face the actual suffering that exists all around you. And so, it requires a certain amount of data and courage to be willing to do that. But that's not the final stage, of course. That's maybe the initial stage of clarity. But you might say at that stage you see how difficult everyone's life is. But at a more deeper stage you may see everyone as Buddha, or as perfect, or as... You see it through to each person's heart. And in that sense

[51:43]

that raw destructive quality is variable because you see why it's so. And you see that really it's because everybody in some strange way is struggling to be complete or to be one with everything. And through our failure to do that completely we have this inner problem. So once you can focus all the way through and see it as a part of each thing, as a part of each person, then everything you see is kind of encouraged in a way. You see people's efforts rather than their failures. And that shift is rather a big one. But let me just go on, if I may, to express the other side here of being reminded of goodwill and so forth. The recognition, not only in Buddhism, but in pre-Buddhist yoga,

[52:44]

is that these tenets, these roots of action to create self-clean are so deep that you need some medicine to begin to effect a cure for it. And the traditional yogic practices which Buddhism incorporated have to do with what kind of mode, perceptual mode, predominates in you. And for those people in whom desire predominates, meditation practices would emphasize seeing the other side of that as you desire. So, for instance, it used to be, in ancient times, a very common practice, and it still is done today to some extent,

[53:44]

for Buddhist monks, though, of this tendency to sit in cemeteries or graveyards where, in fact, in India, anyway, there were decomposing bodies just set out in the open with animals coming and so forth, which we would consider from our civilized point of view to be morbid in the extreme, but from the standpoint of cutting through a certain superficial level of desire, particularly for other humans, there's nothing more straightforward than just to go and look at what the human body is like in some slightly different circumstance, which is, you know, part of what life is part of life. For a Buddhist, of even-mindedness, a decomposed body, being gnawed at by a carrying animal, is no more nor less desirable than one

[54:47]

alive, simply a body in a different state. Practically speaking, one has to overcome an extraordinarily powerful emotional necrosis for such a body, but that's what this is all about. On the whole, I think Buddhists more or less let that practice in its literal sense go by. They didn't do it so much in China and not at all in Japan. But, the basic spirit of the practice, I think, is worth looking at, because it simply points out that we're unable to desire things because we only look at them in a certain narrow bracket of space, which we don't really comprehend. For instance, on the whole, our culture is not particularly fond of the whole realm of people who are old and sick.

[55:47]

And there's a tremendous reinforcement of that desired realm by advertising and buying that beauty. But in fact, people who are old and sick just have a different kind of beauty, and they're no more or less desirable intrinsically than they do when they're young. So, developing this even-mindedness is a matter of retraining or untraining your ordinary sense, and it seems to require to do it thoroughly in some space in your life where you are able to withdraw, at least temporarily, from the stimulation of the ordinary world around you. And you can make your life and sensory world much simpler. So, I think in all spiritual traditions, you have to recognize the value of some kind of active life, for a short time or a whole life.

[56:51]

And, again, our materialistic culture, I think, thinks that monastic life on a whole is something for a very bizarre thing to do, or something that maybe is for people who can't cope. But, and that's true, I mean, the monastery definitely retracts a certain percentage of people like that, but I think from the standpoint of those who understand monastic life and its actual purpose, those people would consider monastic life as a tremendous opportunity, and hopefully a much wider sphere of satisfaction than the sphere of desire. So one thing that I think I do need to point out, because of this bias that we have in our era, is that a life of denial, or of asceticism, is only so from the standpoint

[57:53]

of the desirer. From the standpoint of somebody who does it, it's a way to actually satisfy yourself at this time. What's intrinsic to the world of desire is dissatisfaction. You actually can't satisfy yourself in the realm of desire. And so you remain in it, trapped, because it doesn't actually satisfy you enough. There's always new desires stimulated by the last desire. So, really, what spiritual life is, at least Buddhist spiritual life, I can't speak for others, is really involved in, is in a way, pleasure. Real pleasure. Not just, you might say, sensory stimulation, but actual pleasure in the sense of satisfaction. And that's why, on a whole, people do it. I don't think,

[58:55]

if it was just the ordinary person's image of religious life or monastic life as some kind of denial for ascetic types of people, I don't think it would have lasted very long. What you have is the testimony again and again, by those who've gone into this kind of practice, is that actually, strangely enough, it's the way to satisfy yourself. It doesn't seem so logically, but somehow it seems to turn out that way. And it had something to do with this quality of even-mindedness, that the more even-minded your relationship to your world is, the more satisfying it is. Everything satisfies you more or less equally. You know, as David Roche commented about the Dalai Lama, he appeared to be somebody who was equally happy staring at a wall or talking to 10,000 people.

[59:57]

He didn't make all that much difference. And, you know, he just enjoyed whatever it was. And I don't think that's just because he's the Dalai Lama. I think it's because he's someone who practices it. That your life is conscious and intentional, and not determined by or predetermined by your fixed relationships to a world of objects that you're always sorting into that which you want and that which you don't want. And a natural outcome of this, again, not logically so, but in practice essentially so, is that one develops a kind of emotional warmth or generosity feeling toward other things and people. You develop not ill-will, but good-will. And it's genuine.

[60:58]

It's not, you know, it's not sort of a Disney good-will. But it's a good-will that includes unpleasantness. I think that's maybe the main noticeable difference between, you might say, Buddhist good-wills and other kinds. In my observation of anyway, Buddhist teachers that I've interviewed are genuine. One has the very real sense that if something quite horrible or unpleasant would suddenly appear, that person would not be very much surprised or destabilized by it. They wouldn't necessarily like it. But in other words, it's quite included in what you ordinarily expect to happen. And Shakyamuni is quite interesting in that way because his own life is filled with horror both personally and in... You know, he met me as quite a genuine, warm, nice person. But there was something about that warmth which...

[62:01]

There was something unconditional about it. No, it wouldn't go away if you did something terrible or if you betrayed it or people were awful to you or something. That was included. That possibility was always very much there. So there's something... This is what we mean more by detachment. Detachment is not a kind of unwillingness to throw yourself into something. Detachment is a kind of fallow or pin, kind of way. But detached in the sense that one is not glued to a particular expectation or outcome. That one has a sense that you understand all the different ways things can go and how things usually go. You don't have a lot of unrealistic expectations about people or about the world

[63:04]

or about society. And so in a way, that's a very... You can actually not only satisfy yourself but actually have some capacity to be of some use to people because your goodwill is, for the first time, rather trustworthy, both by yourself and by others. So your use of the word detachment is really the opposite of what Shulman means. So detachment in the sort of Western Judeo-Christian context is always meant to sort of leave life behind. Whereas detachment in the Buddhist sense is to fully embrace life. Emotionally speaking, that's how it is. I mean, if it isn't so, if you meet somebody who like this guy in this story that they tell a lot of Buddhist scriptures, this monk who decided that in characteristic classic fashion to get rid of his ill will, he would go off and live alone and just work on his meditation practices. And he did. But finally he felt that he

[64:05]

had overcome it and he went back to town. And as he was walking by, a leper or a person reached out with his stunted arm and tried to reach out and touch his robe. Maybe he blessed him. Some of you might have touched him. The monk angrily said, Get away from me, can't you see I'm a venerable monk? That kind of detachment doesn't work at all. The minute you test it, it totally falls apart. There's even a more horrific story about Ananda and the mangy dog. And even though it's a bit of an unpleasant story, I think it makes the point better than any other, and I suppose that's why once again, Ananda is one of the great, not Ananda, I'm sorry, Asanga.

[65:07]

Asanga is one of the great figures in Buddhist history. The founder of the mind-only school in India. And the story that is told about Ananda is that in his training days, he became very interested in the figure of Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of the future. And desperately wanted to have a vision, or meet Maitreya, or become one with Maitreya. And the story is that for 12 years, he worked on himself, worked on his prideful feelings and so forth, too. And Maitreya never appeared to him. And finally, in desperation, he's reduced to poverty and starvation. I forget the details of the story, but somehow he encounters this dog that's covered with maggots. And it's so painful. He tries to pick the maggots off the dog,

[66:09]

but the dog is so painful to the dog. It's too painful to the dog. So he realizes the only way to help the dog is to somehow lift the maggots off. So he finally overcomes his last residue of disgust about this most horrible thing you can imagine. And just as he reaches out his tongue, the dog is transformed into Maitreya. Maitreya all of a sudden. The final death of Maitreya. Now, I have my serious doubts as to whether this story ever happened, but psychologically it's quite true. It's that one, you know, it's very difficult to actually overcome once you hold out in other ways. Practically speaking, it's very hard to make much real headway, but you might say at that point, what's exemplified by this story is the non-visa sangha had some genuine sense of goodwill. He wasn't any longer doing

[67:10]

good things because he thought that's what people were supposed to do. He was thoroughly embodied. So it actually became who he was. So, the last of the three precepts, which is to benefit beings, is an actual outcome of the first two. When you have thoroughly overcome karmic activity, in its relative sense, which includes wholesome activity also. In other words, wholesome activity, if it's just a kind of alternation with unwholesome activity, is not really

[68:11]

pure activity or activity to benefit beings in its widest sense. So although wholesome activity is better than unwholesome activity because, as I said, it's more in the direction of liberation, it itself is not a waking life. Rather, you might say it resembles a waking life. As long as there's some underlying fundamental confusion or prior perception of an inherent being, wholesome activity will not prevail or last, but rather will occur when conditions are right for it, and when conditions are not good, something else will happen. So the quality of karmic life is that it is influenced by conditions of various kinds. That's not to say that we shouldn't work from the very beginning to maximize the wholesome conditions for our life and for everybody's life.

[69:14]

But it's a lot like why Buddhism has traditionally not been too fervent to try to somehow improve society, because that's more at the level of changing the conditions. If you look at history, there have been societies where conditions have been very good and societies where conditions have not been so good. It kind of goes up and down. One should operate in that level as much as possible and try to maximize the wholesome conditions of one's life and society. But really, it doesn't exactly touch the real level at which one can benefit from this. Maybe you want to disagree or you want to talk about this more, but there is a sense that both the wholesome side and unwholesome side of karmic life are incomplete and are not entirely satisfactory.

[70:15]

I guess you might say that a wholesome activity in its karmic sense is unsatisfying because you get discouraged after a certain point. You do it for a while and you try to help people and do things and it all doesn't work and gets washed away or somebody betrays you and then you feel, what's the point? You feel very discouraged. So you might say that awakened activity is wholesome activity which is not capable of being disturbed by anything. Which is part of what I meant by Suzukiro should not seem to expect anything whatever happens, but it's not something you can ever think of. As he used to say, one of his common phrases was, you should know what it's like to have your head cut off with a sword. He said, because many human beings have had their head cut off with a sword in history. It's a relatively

[71:19]

common experience. That should be something that's never occurred to you, that you've never thought of or that you feel you couldn't face. That's something that should be a part of your life and that's the way it goes. You could be a very good person and get your head cut off. Thomas Morse. There's a famous poem or death poem by a Zen priest who did have his head cut off with a sword. He and this sort of thing does happen. A leader, a military leader of a faction during one of the civil wars in Japan came to his temple and asked for sanctuary in the temple. And he said okay. And then the other guys came and said no. Give him up. And the priest said no. It's in my temple. I'm not going to give him up. And so they said well if you don't give him up we'll kill him. And so he said

[72:20]

I'm not going to give him up. And so they did and there's this poem I don't remember exactly but it's something like the swish of the sword is like the blowing of the breeze. Anyway A real goodwill is that you don't get discouraged even though that's the way it goes. He obviously brought it on himself. He could have not taken the guy in or beaten him up. He stood by his gun. And lots of people can do that but the key point is that he wasn't discouraged by it. He wasn't discouraged by the injustice or the insanity of civil wars and people fighting them. He was totally innocent and why should he die? He didn't discourage in particular. And his poem reflected a sense that there was something his own mind

[73:21]

was quite calm about it. That this was a big sacrifice that was very heroic or something. Just what happened. So that's the quality that is involved in this. And I think the Dogenfestival and I'll see what happens to you when you read it but I think that even if the Dogenfestival is more like that what he's trying to say partly is we're not talking about morality. It's not some show-off and mockicide. It's not morality exactly. It's some underlying transformation of human consciousness which is enough in a different realm from good and bad as the moon is for clouds. That kind of thing.

[74:22]

It's just an altogether different realm that one acts on. In which this prior conception of an inherent meaning is given up. So, is that enough to leave you with until next week?

[74:44]

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