This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. It's a joy and honor to be with you all. I just want to scan the Buddha field and get to see all the wonderful beings that have appeared and shown in this virtual practice space. And I appreciate when people turn on their videos so we can see each other and connect in that particular way and have a sense of showing up for each other and a sense of transparency and deep support of each other in that way. So thank you so much again. And as Kodo mentioned this week, both Beginner's Mind Temple as well as the online practice center or temple, we've embarked on a 10-week fall practice period or ANGO. And as Koto also said, the theme, the focus of our ongoing is on karma.

[01:04]

So those who are participating are studying karma, according to Shakyamuni's wise counsel. And he said, the cause by which karma comes into play should be known. The diversity in karma should be known. The result of karma should be known. The cessation of karma should be known. And the path of practice for the cessation of karma should we know. So by studying karma, by studying causes and conditions and cause and effects as manifest to our conduct of and habits of body, speech, and mind, we can in time realize, just as the Buddha did, that path of practice, which you can say unbinds us, from the chains of karma and leads us toward true liberation and happiness. Also, as Koda said, a number of us today are participating in a day-long meditation to help us further settle into this intensive period of study.

[02:15]

And in this light, I thought I would share with you this morning some thoughts and words of encouragement in regards to the study of karma and our practice of Zazen. As many of our great Dharma ancestors have taught. The root cause and nature of our karmic patterns can only be fully understood through meditation, which is said to be the most important yogic tool for managing karma. And Shakyamuni Buddha's own pivotal insight into karma came to him during the night of his awakening or his enlightenment. and essentially laid the foundation for its fundamental teaching of the Four Noble Truths, core teaching, if not the core teaching of Buddhism. So, what is karma? Last evening, last Wednesday evening, during the opening talk for the practice period, I gave an overview of a number of key aspects of karma.

[03:17]

And I thought, just for the benefit of anyone who's not so familiar with the concept or would appreciate kind of a refresh, I would offer you just a very brief summary. Karma is a natural law. And it's one of which has nothing to do with the ideas of justice or retribution or a fixed destiny. And while the Pali word karma means action or deed or doing, the emphasis in Buddhism is one of intentional action. We could say volitional behavior. Intention, said the Buddha. is karma. Intending one does karma by way of body, speech, and mind. So in Buddhism, the theory of karma is also known as the theory of cause and effect of action and reaction. And whenever you take an action, there will be a result or a consequence. And the results will be colored or shaped by your intentions.

[04:22]

So given this, another way to describe the law of karma, is as a moral law of causation. Because the quality of consciousness giving rise to an act determines its consequences. And it's the fundamental cause of karma is said to be ignorant. Now, karma can take two forms, as an action and as a result of an action. An action or a deed, again, you remember the word karma means action, deed, or doing. produces a result. In Sanskrit, that would be vipaka, or fruit, under which certain circumstances, which when it matures or ripens, falls upon the one responsible as a consequence of some result, the one responsible for planting the seed of that particular fruit. However, for an action to produce a fruit, it must be either morally good, the word used in Sanskrit,

[05:25]

kusala, or bad akusala, and be conditioned by volitional impulse. So to the degree that this impulse leaves a trace in the psyche of the dur, it leads their destiny, if you want to use that word, in the direction determined by the effect of the deed. And the time of ripening karmic fruit can be either in the present, in the future, or in future lives in rebirths. And it's said that due to unresolved karma, one can experience countless rebirths in a cycle of existence, also known as samsara. Although good deeds do bring positive reports, they are all the same in genuine karma. And thus, according to the Buddhist system, they lead to rebirth. So in order to liberate oneself from the cycle of rebirth, one must refrain from both good and bad deeds or karma, or essentially to go beyond karma.

[06:36]

Okay. So I hope you could more or less follow that. It's a lot of information, and karma is a very complex topic, one that can take years to even begin to kind of have a sense of, I don't know exactly, do I work with this and fathom it in some way? One thing to know is that overall, when we speak of a person's karma, it means the sum total of the person's direction in life. You can think of the tenor of the things that have occurred around that particular person. So karma is essentially an accumulation of psychophysical tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which then themselves result in further accumulations of these habit tendencies, you know, in a similar nature. So it's easy, in other words, to become imprisoned by our karma, to think that the cause lies elsewhere with other people, other conditions beyond our control, and never within ourselves.

[07:45]

But it's not necessary to be bound by our karma. It's always possible to change our karma. Just wonderful teaching, the Buddha Dharma. Now, according to our Zen ancestors, the study Buddha Dharma is to study karma. The study Buddha Dharma is to study karma. I once heard Tynch and Reb and Emerson doing that, suggesting a practice period that it was a class, I think, at Tassajara many years ago, that the Soto Zen School's primary focus is really on studying and learning the nature of karma. Another way to say this is that Zen, actually all schools of Buddhism, is really about the study of the self. To study karma is to study the self.

[08:52]

To study karma, is to study our relationship to both our small, limited, relative sense of self, and to our limitless, all-inclusive, ultimate self. And Dogen famously taught that to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by new things. When actualized by many things, your body and mine, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. To study karma is to see the karmic web of interrelationships in which you and I and all beings coexist. and co-create through our activities of body, speech, and mind.

[09:56]

But we can only see and have insight into the profound nature of the web of our interbeing when we drop off our fundamental delusion, our ignorance. An ignorance, a delusion in which we conceive ourselves as self-autonomous, When fully dropping off the conceit of self, no trace of our karmic activity remains. And thus it is said, everything is liberated. In the practice of Zen, we make it a habit to sit down and let our practice of Zazen reveal to us the reality of this moment in its entirety. as it's manifesting in this very body-mind. This very body-mind is the totality of karmic conditions, individual, collective, universal, that have given rise to this particular person.

[11:10]

So we sit and we study ourselves and we open. We open to the totality of our life. former San Francisco Zen Center, Abbess, Blanche Hartman, was fond of sharing that in the first instruction she ever received, the first Zazen instruction she ever received, which happened to be given by Katagiri Roshi, he said that we set Zazen to settle the self on the self and let the flower of our life force bloom. So Katagiri was suggesting that everything we need And everything we are is right here, right now. So when sitting in Zaza, we are fully taking our role and place in life. Fully inhabiting our Dharma position. And accepting our life as it has bloomed due to past and present karmic conditions and karmic consciousness.

[12:18]

In his essay, Benderwa, it's a word which can be translated as the wholehearted practice of the way. Dogen wrote the following. If a human being, even for a single moment, manifests the Buddhist posture in the three forms of conduct, a body, speech, and mind, while that person sits up straight in samadhi, the entire world of Dharma assumes the Buddhist posture. and the whole of space becomes the state of realization. The practice thus increases the Dharma joy that is the original state of the Buddha Tatakaras, and renews the splendor of the realization of the truth. Therefore, throughout the Dharma worlds and the ten directions, ordinary beings, you and I, all become clear and pure, and body and mind at once.

[13:24]

They experience the state of great liberation and their original features face beingness appear. So Dogen is saying that when we accept our life, accept our potential and our qualities and appreciate and enjoy these, we discover self-realization and fulfillment. And this is not a mere passive acceptance, but it's an actively taking on and finding a way of responding to our life, receiving our life. This experience is the samadhi, the non-dual concentration of accepting our own karma. The samadhi of accepting our own karma. the results, in other words, of our actions, body, speech, and mind.

[14:26]

We are feeling and accepting the situation with its difficulties and its richness while using all of our abilities and not turning away from anything we might experience, not turning away from our fear, our sadness, our anxiety, and facing the challenging parts of ourselves. And when we face those challenging parts of ourselves, we connect to our humanity on vulnerability, our rawness, our realness. So our common then is, how do we accept our place in the world, our Dharma position in the totality of self, universal self? when we settle the self on the self, we forget the self.

[15:34]

That is, we see that it's not found. As I mentioned before, karmic consciousness entails a belief in a separate self. This fundamental ignorance is said to give rise to the energy that sets the force of karma in motion. It's not that there's no self, but there's no self-independent of a pattern of relationships. In other words, of our profound and true being, because all we are are relationships. So the self isn't karma. Karma is how the self carries the self forward. How the self, the conceit of self, is propagated. How it persists as an energetic wave. One propelled through cause and effect.

[16:37]

So we study the self. We learn the self. Study the karma of the self. The karma or activity of selfing. We also observe the compulsion behind selfing. the way in which the conceit of self perpetuates itself by creating some sense of lack or problem that it needs to fill or fix. However, when we study the self and truly analyze its nature, in time we can forget the self because we eventually realize There is no fundamental lack. Nor is there an independent, autonomous entity that we can even grasp as the self.

[17:42]

What does exist are processes. Processes of conscious habit patterns that are being propelled forward by the three poisons that create hate and delusion. So meditation, we cease responding to the world habitually. Instead, we watch the momentum of the mind as if we're sitting on the bank of a riverbank, sitting on a riverbank, observing the current flow by. And we observe our desires and our feelings and thoughts and intentions, doing our best not to grab onto them. not to lean too far over lest we fall into the current and carry it away. So instead of acting on or reacting to them, we give them our full attention.

[18:47]

We simply observe, mindfully. When we don't reinforce these habit patterns, body speak to mind, when we don't stir up the currents further, In time, they quiet down, settle, and they no longer direct their lives. Our karma is understood to be fluid, flexible, changeable. So by changing our minds, particularly our intentions or our motivating impulses, we change our actions. And by changing our actions, we change our karma. It's the teaching of Buddhism that both Zazen, meditation, and mindfulness practices change karma. When you meditate, you are now allowing your self-fing impulses to translate into action.

[19:56]

For the time being, at least, we're engaging in Zazen. while we're engaging in Sasa, we're just watching them. Look at them. Looking at them, you quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away. They have a life of their own. They arise seemingly out of nowhere, abide for a period of time, and then they eventually pass away. They are not you. They're just Thank you. Just, for example, temporary thought energy. And you don't have to believe them as truth or conform to them or give them authority. You're not feeding or reacting to impulses. You come to understand their nature as thoughts directly. And what is the nature of thoughts? empty with no inherent autonomous existence.

[21:03]

There are simply transient energy clouds passing through the internal, boundless, unhindered, skylight Buddha mind, which is our true nature. Now, amazingly, this process of simply observing mental phenomena look or you could say mind stuff, without otherwise engaging it, it actually burns up destructive impulses in the so-called fires of meditative concentration, equanimity and non-activity. Once seen through, once their empty nature is recognized, the mind stuff dissolves. like snowflakes in a fire. At the same time, creative insights and impulses, ones that potentially lead to beneficial action, all survives because they're no longer obstructed by or squeezed out by some of the more turbulent and destructive ones.

[22:19]

It's in this way that mindfulness can refashion the things in the chain of actions and consequences, actions and results. And in doing so, it unchains us, frees us, and opens up new directions for us through the unfolding moments we call our life. Without studying our karma and without practicing mindfulness, we can all too easily get stuck in the momentum coming out of our past karma. With no clue to our innate capacity or potential for change or new directions, we could say that it's ultimately our mindlessness that binds us. The longer we remain blind to both our conditioned habit patterns, the more imprisoned our life will feel.

[23:23]

And the more likely we'll succumb to reactivity or blaming others for our misery and unhappiness, rather than taking responsibility for our own minds. Perhaps you know people who live that way. Or perhaps you recognize that tendency in yourself. If we hope to change our karma, it means we have to stop engaging in those things that cloud or body-mind, or negatively color our every action. And it doesn't mean simply doing good deeds. Although focusing on creating wholesome karma through good deeds is an important approach to working with one's karma. Instead, it means knowing who you are, and that you're not fundamentally your karma, whatever it might be at this moment.

[24:27]

It means to align yourself with the way things actually are with reality. It means align yourself with awareness and clear seeing. The tremendous gift of Buddhist practice is to point to the possibility of a heart-mind that is resting and settled on itself in such a way that it's not driven by volition or intentionality at all. When we talk about the end of karma, it means that intentionality or dualistic volition disappears completely. The mind isn't trying to get anything or do anything. And since the idea of self has so much to do with intentionality, the self, too, disappears.

[25:33]

The heart and mind have a sense of being present in the world when this happens. You know, it's a world in which everything is transparent and luminous and that peace needs. There's no duality. And we no longer expect the world to revolve around us. It just is. And we just are. So as the Buddha taught, our mind is the initial place where we begin the process of changing our karma. After all, it is the instrument in which all of our thoughts and feelings arise. And the study of karma shows us that the way that impulses and perceptions can translate to actions in the world, whether good or bad. However, when you stop outward activity for some time, and practice being still, then right there in that moment, with that decision to sit, you are already breaking the flow of old karma and creating entirely new and healthier karma.

[26:50]

So we could say that within lies the root of change, the turning point for our life. course, when we are sitting zazen, sitting up straight in samadhi, as Dogen says, and manifesting the Buddhist posture in the three forms of conduct of body, speech, and mind, upright, attentive, open, we are not creating much new karma because we're just sitting still. And when sitting zazen, according to Dogen, one is also manifesting the the wondrous realm beyond cause and effect, beyond good and evil, beyond karma. The first pure free sentence then is sometimes phrased as cease from all evil. And I don't find the word evil a very helpful term. Someone who grew up Christian, I actually think it translates better as harm.

[27:52]

I understand harm. Evil doesn't quite translate for me. So cease from all harm. Once someone said that when you sit very deeply, at least you are doing no harm. The number one precept in Buddhism, right? In fact, all the precepts are about that one thing, doing no harm. When you sit in absolute stillness, you stop transmitting the karmic streams that are moving through you all the time. The very act of stopping, of nurturing moments of... non-activity or non-doing. Simply watch the impulses arise and pass away without acting on them. This puts you in an entirely different, say, footing or space vis-a-vis both the present and the future. And how does that happen? Because it's only by being fully in this moment that any future moment might be one of them.

[28:56]

What? Greater understanding, clarity, kindness, benefit. And one therefore less dominated by fear or hurt. So there can be more dignity, more acceptance. Remember, what happens now happens later. What happens now will lay the seeds for what will occur later. If there is no mindfulness or equanimity or compassion now, then the only time we have to contact it and to nourish it and nourish ourselves to make it, to lay the seeds for it, how likely is it that it will magically appear later when we're under stress and duress? So we practice now to cultivate the capacity for when the shit hits the fan, we can show up in a way that doesn't undo us to meet what's happening.

[30:10]

We're more capable, responsive, better than reactive. So again, the word karma means action or doing. So there is the karma of activity, of doing, and there is the non-karma of non-activity. Karma of activity, of doing, and the non-karma of non-activity, non-doing. In the Shavu Genzo, Sri Maki, Dogen writes, sitting is the practice of the reality of life. is non activity. This is the true form of the self. Outside of this, there is nowhere to search the Buddha Dharma. Sitting is the practice of the reality of life.

[31:13]

Sitting is non activity. This is the true form of the self. Outside of this, there is nowhere to search for the Buddha Dharma. Our practice of Zaza is also known as Shikintaza. Shikintaza is a Japanese term that can be translated as nothing but precisely sitting. Nothing but precisely sitting. And the whole point of Shikintaza is to just sit there doing nothing. A practice of not doing. Non-activity. However, as you probably know, Right? Any time you've sat down, this is so difficult. This is so difficult that we can actually hardly conceive of it. Instead, we're imagining we're supposed to be to sit there and meditate.

[32:15]

I'm meditating now, right? We're supposed to be to concentrate and be aware of this moment and this thing and that thing and something, anything, anything but really, really doing nothing. Sometimes when I settle into a period of zazen, I try to encourage myself by inviting myself actually not to meditate. I think I've told people before this, right? I remind myself I don't have to do anything. Just relax. Sit there and be awake, present. And in an effort to see the extent to which I'm not relaxed, I might look for all the places in my body and mind where there's a sense of control, of holding, attention, or clinging, all that, some sense of separation, grasping. If I look deeply into these areas, I can feel underlying the tension, the strong efforting or doing that's happening.

[33:27]

It's kind of like a whirlpool of old, stuck, karmic energy that is subtly, or maybe not so subtly, grasping and resisting some essential truth, some reality, something my part, some part of my being doesn't want to acknowledge or want to accept. So what I notice is I invite my body to relax in those areas. To breathe into the knots and the eddies of anxiety and worry. Whatever might be there. And see if they might soften and settle a little bit. Sometimes they do and sometimes not so much. If I get caught up thinking things should be different. Shouldn't be all uptight. I should be different.

[34:30]

Then I tighten up more. And then there are the other times when I'm just sitting there and, you know, the whole universe just suddenly opens up. I'm in samadhi. I'm coursing in samadhi. I'm awake. I'm here. I'm present. I'm experiencing what Katagiri referred to as the flower of my life loves blooming. And with that comes the sense of gratitude, intimacy, and, you know, that connectedness, that relationship, that dependency charisma, that feeling of being dependency charisma with everything. In this moment, it's just a sense of having embraced my life, the totality of my life, maybe momentarily, and realizing that my happiness, my ease is not contingent of things being a certain way.

[35:32]

And that's a wonderful, delicious, quality experience. And then seemingly, you know, in the next systems, I'm falling off again. I'm falling into karmic consciousness by thinking and remembering, planning, and worrying, negotiating, and yada, yada, yada. And ironically, you know, what I've noticed for myself is I often end up thinking about meditation practice. What am I doing sitting here? Am I doing it right now? Even after all these years, that thought still comes up. Am I doing it right? And then there are the questions. Okay, well, so who's thinking this? So I go back to all the kind of teachings. Who's thinking this? Who am I? Am I the self-conscious part that is aware of sitting? And am I not also my body, which continues to sit here patiently and still is the vital light?

[36:35]

you know, twitching and mind wondering, who am I, who am I? And then asking that question becomes, what can I do? So regardless, it's nice just to sit wholeheartedly, right? To mentally and volitionally just sit, giving myself over as physically as possible, mentally, and whole being. just to the activity of sitting. So as an expedient means, we practice non-activity, non-doing. It's part of the efficacy or skillful means of our assertive Zen practice. A practice is something we do, although paradoxically, in this case, our practice is non-doing, non-activity, practice non-activity. As one teacher I know said, Because human beings are so attached to doing, this is a clever way to get us to commit to Zaza.

[37:39]

So how does one go about practicing not doing? Well, basically, we can use whatever technique we can find that convinces us or allows us to stop doing. I'm sure maybe you're familiar with one classic approach, which is to practice non-doing by following the breath. And this is a good way to sustain not doing for more than a moment. Continuity of awareness of the breath. However, it's important from the perspective of Shikantaza that we don't make following our breath into another activity, another doing. I'm sure many of you have heard Blanche, you know, years ago tell the story about how after feeling down about herself and her practice, you know, she finally was able to follow her breath for an entire duration of one period of sitting. Or maybe it was one day of sitting, I can't quite remember. And she was really proud of her accomplishment.

[38:46]

And she went into Suzuki Roshi for Doka-san, you know, exclaiming to him, now I can count every breath. What do I do next? And Suzuki Roshi leaned forward and said fiercely to her, don't. ever think you can sit zazen. That's a big mistake. You don't sit zazen. Zazen sits zazen. So allowing zazen to sit zazen means that the egoic you that always wants to be in control, that wants to attain or gain something, should be better, perhaps. It's given permission relaxed and subtle into not doing, into not creating new karma. And because you're not doing anything, you can follow your breath. So maybe that's just a little bit of doing, but it's a relatively small scenario.

[39:51]

Guy Armstrong, in his book, Emptiness, A Practical Guide for Meditations, says this about non-doing. Non-doing does not mean that one no longer acts. The true significance of non-doing is that the actions of a fully enlightened being no longer come out of self-centeredness. The self has been seen thoroughly, so thoroughly, that eye-making and mind-making have ceased to operate. So there is no longer an imaginary core, that actions have to feed or protect. Without the burden of self, the mind is clear and the heart is open. When a situation presents itself, the response from the enlightened mind comes naturally and immediately without premeditation. Wisdom and loving kindness have become so well-established that they are the intentions from which actions spring.

[40:59]

Volition still operates, but without reference to the false sense of self. It is the selfless, spontaneous nature of the action that takes it out of the field of karma, leading to future results. So in other words, it can be, we can be, if we can be momentarily free from occupations or preoccupations of self-centeredness and the suffering that comes with it, then we can start to discover the spontaneous nature of our response at any particular time. We don't have to be perfect, but just trust our purity of heart and wholehearted intentions will result in beneficial consequences. My teacher, T.S. Schroeser, for Dharma Transmission gave me the name Tenzin. which basically translates as spontaneously thus.

[42:02]

So she was telling me, I've got to work on the spontaneity part, right? Just thus, thusness. Trust my part, trust the universe, just be thus. I'm still working on it. Okay, so before I close, I'd like to offer a particular practice of non-activity or non-doing, the one which invites us to let go of or not take up anything that arises in our field of experience. And thereby allows us to simply rest and relax the mind. And the following is one of my favorite meditation instructions. And it's known as Tilopa's six words of advice. It's sometimes referred to as the six nails. And Tilopa was an 11th century adept who likely lived in I think it was the region of Northwest India. And I often remind myself of this practice whenever I sit down for Zaza.

[43:05]

So Talopa's advice goes like this. Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Rest, relax. Right now, rest. So let go of what has passed. In other words, don't recall, don't get lost in memory or stories about the past. Don't trace past experiences, even your great insights or your Kensho experiences. And let go of what may come, the future. Don't imagine, don't conceive of a future or an alternative reality. Don't get caught up in planning or goals to achieve. Let go of what is happening now.

[44:06]

So don't think. Don't go into thinking or labeling mode, even about the experiences that you're having now. And this is somewhat different from the Theravada and the Vipassana traditions, which encourage this in terms of the insight. Don't try to figure anything out. So again, don't examine. Refrain from analyzing, assessing, or diagnosing yourselves with some measure of what you think you're supposed to be in terms of your practice, what's right or what's wrong. Again, just sit. Drop all the judging and the evaluation. Don't try to make anything happen. So don't control. Stop trying to fabricate a particular experience in your meditation. or try to change reality to fit what we regret, right? I should be having this kind of experience. And finally, rest. Relax. Right now, rest. So rest.

[45:08]

Non-activity. Non-doing. Come back to ease in the subtle mind and body. Settle into expansiveness. Rest as the spaciousness that we fundamentally are. At its heart, this meditation instruction is about using simple awareness to allow what is happening in the present moment to take place. You might notice that the meditative activity here is all about non-doing, or the endeavor to actively refrain from activity, which is a form of renunciation. Actually, by sitting on Zazen, we enact renunciation. Zazen is considered in Zen as the form is true in renunciation, and remorse for our karmic actions. So we take the posture for Buddha, and we relinquish all other activities as we sit. We express what we can't even conceive of, our nature as Buddha.

[46:11]

And it's said that the virtue of your one-person zazen cannot be comprehended. Elsewhere in the Benda Law Dugan says, the zazen will be one person at one moment. imperceptibly accords with all things and fully resonates through all time. The six very short lines of instruction by Thalopa not only show us how to settle, or as it sometimes said, how to place the mind, but also highlight all that me as meditators need to be careful of as we cultivate our practice. Chidloppa is showing us how we can nurture our practice while simultaneously deepening its meaning. That the two are not mutually exclusive. And I said that sometimes this practice is called the six nails. And I think nails, in some sense, the fact that they emphasize a fundamental not moving, non-activity.

[47:19]

As if you were nailed down a place and weren't able to go or be anywhere else but right here. Being fully present and active. The things as it is in this moment. And my teacher, Tia, again adds, she adds a seventh nail, actually, to Lopez 6, which is stay awake and notice what is always happening. What is always in every experience, I should say. Stay awake. notice what is always in every experience. What is that? What is ever present? Are you in relationship with that? How are you in relationship with that? So in other words, the only activity if you even want to call it that is simply abiding as awareness itself, as awake presence, simply presencing, simply being samadhi. So closing, well, the practice of Zazen is a wonderful way to reduce our karmic flows and imprints.

[48:30]

Sooner or later, we'll have to get up off our seats and go about our daily activities, returning to the world of doing, of action, of karma and relationships. So I encourage you to go about the rest of your day-to-day with as much careful attentiveness and inner stillness as you can. Whether you'll be sitting, working, spending time with your friends and family, joining the Women's March for Reproductive Justice, completing chores, or just going for a walk in nature. And despite whatever karmic resolution or enunciation that has occurred during Zaza, we still have to act mindfully and compassionately in the world. avoiding harmful, angry, greedy actions that create negative karma in the rest of our life. And that is a subject for another talk, in fact, a whole series of talks.

[49:36]

So I'll stop there. Thank you for your kind attention and patience and allowing me to go a little bit over it since we don't have any Q&A today. And I very much looking forward to continuing. our collective study of karma together. Thank you very much. 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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:24]

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