I did mention that the Buddha's precepts do not come from on high, exactly, but rather emerged gradually or situationally, or as the situation demanded, as the early, quite informal gathering of renunciants or recluses around the great teacher began to take shape as some kind of community, religious community. And even at that, the simple rules which they set up were not really in any way in and of

[01:08]

themselves unique to Buddhism. You might say that the major ones were, for the most part, the basic guidelines of how to live that were pretty much established in Indian religious culture, at least the religious culture of the Aryan culture, the invader culture, which was the dominant culture of the area where the Buddha taught. So what really is explicitly Buddhist about the precepts is the understanding of karma, which is one of the Buddha's great contributions to religious teaching, particularly to the

[02:20]

religious teaching of that time. It was not, he really was, his insight into the nature and consequence of human activity really was not at all in agreement with or in the mainstream of Indian religious philosophy or teaching up to that time. You can see this in the number of dialogues in the early sutras in which the Buddha speaks with or has a dialogue with many of the disciples or actually leaders of other movements. And of course, given that it's a Buddha sutra, he always convinces them rather than the other way around. But still, it's clear that he has rather different ideas about things, and in particular about the nature of the source of our behavior or activity and what to do about it or how to cope with it.

[03:25]

And this is all summarized under the heading of karma, which like many words in Buddhism is a word that has a long history, long before it was picked up by the Buddha. It's one of the big words. There's eight or ten big words in Buddhism that have so much, they cover so much territory that it's very hard to even use the word as a word. It almost is a topic heading or a title of a teaching, a body of teaching. And in and of itself, the word doesn't carry enough to cover all of what is meant by it. So the word karma is one of these big words, and means, in its simplest form, what you do. It means action. That's its so-called dictionary meaning, or that's what the word means in the language.

[04:36]

But the underlying religious question that began the Buddha on his spiritual path was the question of why do people do what they do? What's the underlying reason for the human world as we perceive it? Which results in suffering and unhappiness and frustrated existence. This fundamental religious question is where all of us start in one way or another. Once we open ourselves to that question, we have to look into ourselves and look at others and try to get some handle on what fundamentally motivates human beings to do what they do.

[05:47]

And very quickly we come to the issue of is our activity a matter of choice? Do we freely choose it? Or is it determined by the past, or by our birth, or by the gods, by impersonal natural forces? Is it some combination of these things? Is there no rhyme or reason to any activity? Is it kind of a random, absurd, and on a whole futile, unruled or unruly kind of event? These issues were looked at in a whole variety of ways by the predecessors of the Buddha. And also in Western philosophy, there are various kinds of thinking about this.

[07:01]

Characteristically, being in the milieu that he was, the Buddha's solution was to practice yogic meditation to find out if this was in a sense the science or the proof or the investigative means to determining the answer to this question. So he started out by practicing all the standard yogic techniques which were available to him at the time. Most of which had to do with the alteration of states of consciousness in which one entered a state of psychic and physical stasis or calm in which the mental activity was very much reduced, if not entirely stopped. This is a very sound approach in a way

[08:05]

because if what you want to look at is the source or wellspring of what we do, of our activity, it would be good to stop doing it for a while and try to catch the point at which it happens again. The Buddha's own conclusion is that just by altering the state of consciousness or temporarily stopping the process and then trying to watch it start again was not really thorough-going enough. Somehow it felt like he was missing the actual source of it. In the great mythic event of sitting down under the Bodhi tree or Bo tree he decides to practice somewhat differently. It may be that if we come around to this theme again at the end of the class we could talk to some extent about the relationship

[09:07]

between the kind of precepts we have and the kind of meditation practice that we do because there is some relationship there. Anyway, the conclusion of the Buddha, as you all know, is that some combination actually of determinism and free volition that what we are is a result or consequence of what we have done and what we will be is a consequence of what we are going to do right now. This nexus or cusp of activity

[10:09]

should be the focus of our effort always in spiritual practice. So karma for the Buddha, for Buddhism, means intentional action of body, speech or mind in the present moment. So intentional action of body, speech or mind in the present is what we mean by karma. And the precepts are focused on that,

[11:13]

focused on intentional action of body, speech and mind in the present moment. That's what the precepts refer to is what you are doing right now, consciously and intentionally. Now this question of intention is fairly tricky to look at or to organize and I'd like to take a little time to do that because immediately the first question that would come to mind is what is intentional action? And we could think of some examples of borderline cases. What makes this complicated is that

[12:20]

of course our activity falls into certain regular habitual patterns. For instance a good example of that is smoking. A lot of us smoke. And for most people who smoke a long time smoking is pretty habitual. You hardly even notice exactly that you are reaching for a cigarette or whatever. It seems to be rather unintentional almost. You don't exactly make a conscious choice to do it. But nevertheless each time you do it some intention is there. So intentional doesn't mean so clearly intentional that it's obvious to you that it's intentional. It may be intentional Well let's put it this way.

[13:21]

With regard to something habitual or repetitive that you do the intention to do it may be of the nature of giving a slight kick to a potter's wheel that's already turning. The basic energy is quite big and the intention maybe to maintain it at that level might be quite tiny. So a great deal of our most important intentional actions are of that nature because they're running in the pattern in the habit patterns that we've built up over a long period of time. For Buddhists we would say many lifetimes. So we may not any longer be consciously aware of our intentional kick or intentional spark in the activity because most of the energy may be coming from what we call the fruit of previous action. So actually our activity is some combination or some coming together of what we call habit energy

[14:25]

or fruit energy of all that we have done combined with some willingness to do it yet one more time or to go along with it again. Of course occasionally we actually make a choice or a decision which is something quite fresh and new and all the energy of it is coming from your conscious intention like the decision to change jobs or to go to a movie or something like that. We don't have much doubt in our minds that yes in fact this is intentional and we do have a choice and so forth. But interestingly enough those kinds of choices because you have so much control over them are actually not really the problem of our life on the whole lot. So interestingly enough when you have some choice that's very clear to you it's in fact quite easy on the whole to know what to do

[15:27]

and what really is the problem for us is the choices we are making that we are not even aware that we are making. And this is where the question of precepts I think really has its primary applicability is not some artificial situation where the choices are so clear that you have no sense of ambivalence or ambiguity at all you know I'm going to do this or do that. You may have some agonizing about those things but still what is the primary mode of energy of our life are things that are on the whole rather hidden from us. And the real value of meditation practice

[16:28]

for us, for Buddhists is not so much to develop or investigate unusual states of mind particularly that's maybe a sideline for us but primarily to get access to the fundamental level of our intentions which particularly our habitual intentions. And what's interesting about the insight of Buddhism about these is that our most fundamental level of intention is not unique to us but in fact it's shared by everyone. Or to put it another way at our most fundamental

[17:29]

working level of our spiritual life human beings are very much the same all over. There's not a great deal of difference. So one of the maybe when you think about it rather obvious but one of the interesting points of Buddhist understanding of human life is that it is rather a universal understanding. The way it's put forward is a kind of universal ethics or universal psychology of human beings. Or to put it another way you might say the yogic insight

[18:30]

of the Buddha is at a sufficiently primary or deep level that it can be used it doesn't involve culture or the specifics of upbringing or background too much and I think that's been at the time of the Buddha I would say that was a hypothesis but I think given the fact that Buddhism has spread and effectively spread throughout the world and gone into many different cultures with lots of different conflicting value systems and managed to find a way to apply itself to those situations I think is to a large extent proved the point. I think Buddhism has stood up as a understanding of how human beings are and act which is

[19:32]

pretty universal. This is one of the articles of faith of Buddhism which is that all beings are fundamentally the same or have Buddha nature and not just all human beings but all beings all life However the particular teachings and practice of Buddhism are directed primarily to beings like ourselves namely human beings The underlying understanding of

[20:32]

how karma works applies to all beings but there is a specific teaching for the kind of beings that we are And these precepts that we have are precepts for human beings animals might have to follow different kinds of precepts I don't think a tiger could follow the precept not to kill very easily because it's designed to kill that's the nature of the tiger it doesn't survive any other way But in a way animals don't need precepts in quite the same way as human beings because what makes

[21:36]

the human kind of consciousness rather unique in the six worlds, the six different sentient beings is that we have this ability to change and adjust how we are who we are all the time we have this ability to develop our consciousness and change it within our lifetime other kinds of beings have much more fixed kind of consciousness there's not much flexibility in an animal's consciousness the Buddhist idea of the cosmos includes various celestial rarified beings like angels or gods and so forth and they too have a rather fixed kind of consciousness they can't adjust or change who they are very much so you might say in other kinds of realms

[22:37]

other than the human realm the intentional life is not is not there there much much less this is why human birth is supposed to be considered to be in Buddhism the best most favorable kind of birth because as a human being you can not only be born with the nature of a Buddha, of an awakened one but you can choose to become one and then actualize that choice by practice this is the unique gift of human life and Buddhism with its rather broad vision of the interpenetration and going back and forth in various kinds of life

[23:38]

likens the rarity of human birth this is a tiny little metaphor human birth is like a tortoise see, turtle, turtles are the ones that are in the water a turtle with an eye a particular kind of turtle that has an eye in its stomach and with a very deep desire to see the sky however this turtle, turtles don't usually aren't able to lie on their back in the water, usually they are the other way so usually the eye is pointed down and this turtle requires a board floating in the water with a hole cut right in the middle of it that's just designed for the eye to be there so when he grabs the board with his feet the eye is looking up and can see

[24:38]

so the rarity of human birth is like a turtle swimming in the ocean finding a board designed like that floating by and being able to get up there and grab it and can be satisfied spiritual yearning can be satisfied so one of the big choices that in traditional Buddhism is considered to happen is the choice to take human birth it's considered to be a choice I don't want to go too much into this aspect of things because it's not really on the topic of the class but there's some idea that in some deep way we want this life form and that's why we're in it and in a way it's important because it means that a lot of us think well here I am, I didn't do this it just sort of happened

[25:39]

Buddhism has the idea that you're responsible for being here or at least you should take responsibility as though you chose to be here you should think of your being here as something that you're responsible for as a choice and whether the explanations of Buddhism having to do with reincarnation and rebirth and so forth are metaphorical or literal or some combination of the two is not really so much the point of this discussion the point is that precepts begin with some however vague sense that you might have that first of all the fact that you're here at all is something you're responsible for and certainly now that you're here what you do with it is your responsibility

[26:42]

is your choice so the maybe to make it more graphic those of you behind the board and you can't see so well I'll maybe say what I'm drawing as I do it if you think about of all that has happened all that you have done as a kind of triangle or pyramid coming to a point in this present moment and the opening of the cone of possibilities emanating from this moment of being an inverted triangle which opens out from this moment this picture is always our picture in every moment this is the picture it's a different the contents above and below are different for instance at the moment of your

[27:45]

birth, your physical birth there's a great deal below the line and not a great deal above the line you haven't done anything yet, you've just come out maybe you cried, that was all, that was your first choice maybe that isn't even so much a choice it's just not so intentional the doctor slapped you and then you cried from then on this starts to fill up but this is always the picture and this is not the part of it below the line is not accessible to you, it's already happened it no longer can be adjusted all of it coalesces right now and also what will happen to you in the future is not accessible because it hasn't happened yet what is accessible is always what you are choosing to do

[28:49]

right now and the spark of choice ignites the present moment and completes everything that has come to you which is not karma although the word karma in English is often used for this stuff below the line we say, oh it was my karma as though it's our fate in some predestined way to trip over a stone oh it's my karma or whatever it may be there are many passages in the Buddhist scriptures in which the Buddha is asked about fate or destiny and inconsistently he denies that this is his understanding this is too narrow or constricted an understanding of events and doesn't give enough credence to the fact that the critical

[29:50]

point in this picture of our active or ethical reality is this point of the present what you do with the luggage or baggage that you are carrying on a beginningless path is the critical point and that opportunity is always there this is the special feature of human consciousness so there are really two words we have to remember one is karma which means action and the other word is vipaka which means fruit the fruit of your action and fruit and action

[30:56]

are interacting in every moment so the fruit of all your past deeds comes together in the present moment and the fruit of what you are now doing will reverberate into the future so the interaction is very much like the waves in a pond you know there is some kind of waves going on all the time some of the waves are left over from previous flapping and some of them are going to be produced by flapping that you are going to do now and the ordinary person's effort to deal with the problems of their life is something like if you can imagine yourself as a little frog

[31:57]

in the middle of a pond on a lily pad buffeted by these waves in the pond and kicking the waves to try to make them stop this is the ordinary person's effort of course without realizing it you are perpetuating the whole process so these waves in the pond are like our individual and collective past we are buffeted not only by our own deeds but the deeds of everyone in our society and so forth we don't live in some each of us do not live in some separate pond we all live in the same pond so many of the waves that buffeted us have to do with things that really are not under our control at all the critical point is not that the waves are there because the point in Buddhism is that the waves will always be there as Suzuki Roshi says

[32:58]

waves are the nature of water so some kind of karma or activity is the nature of life and the nature of human beings and there is no way to stop it unless we all die or we don't exist anymore on the moon there are no waves like this there is no life but here on earth there is this wave the issue is what are we going to do in response are we going to kick and create more waves and exacerbate the whole process all the while feeling quite righteous that we are doing something effective kicking these waves we feel we must do this without realizing it perpetuates the process or in some way do something to change or alter or stop these waves so in the Buddhist understanding of karma

[34:01]

there are two basic kinds we could say good and bad but those words in English are a little too stark what's more accurate actually is to use the words wholesome and unwholesome wholesome karma is simply that kind of action or choice which produces a favorable result for yourself and others, a favorable fruit and unwholesome is that which produces an unfavorable fruit and there is a very precise definition of these two

[35:16]

again to reiterate the Buddhist understanding of the source of human activity is [...]

[35:31]

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