Before I do, I'd like to pause and reflect concerning the material of last week having to do with karma and the results of karma and so forth. And attention. One thing that I by diagrams and so forth, may not have adequately conveyed it in the sense that certain kinds of intentions, certain kinds of choices, have a very powerful effect on your whole situations, including your past karma. I alluded to that at the very end with the human story of Devadatta. yet that, as he repents, how much that affected his situation.

[01:11]

The most powerful thought that you could have, at least in Vajrayana Guru, is the thought of enlightenment. but more and more in Buddhist doctrine it comes to be the most important thing, almost. The thought of enlightenment is really very simple. It's just that you have a thought that it's possible to escape or be awakened or be liberated. And the first time that that thought ever occurs to you in your life, it's supposed to be a very dramatic moment. It sets up the conditions for your future awakening, and for others as well. And the early Buddhists and that way now, they were much more concerned with the mechanics of awakening, you know, and getting rid of greed, and illusion, practically speaking.

[02:23]

The potential power of such a simple thought is not really brought out so much, but the more of the dialectics of emptiness and awakening, what develops in later Buddhism, the more important that kind of thought became. And consequently, the power or force of a vow for our lineage, a great vehicle for teaching. Almost more important than your behavior. You might say early Buddhism was much more involved in the exoteric side of your behavior, how you're actually doing with your defilements and so forth. So to our ears, it has its snacks of the puritanical quality. And it also produces the kind of precepts that are very detailed, what you do and what you are and are not doing.

[03:36]

Or the idea of a vow, or you might say a vow in the intention that you make an effort to repeat. You might say the working definition of a vow. So a vow is like any thought, except you repeat it as often as you can think of it. So it may not necessarily be a very strong thought. You may have a fairly weak thought to begin with. Like the thought of enlightenment may be very weak. Maybe just a fleeting image. But if you repeat that thought, it grows in strength. Or it may be a very strong thought. If you don't repeat it, it also doesn't function as a vow. So a vow is a thought that you repeat. And karma is also a thought that you repeat. The visual patterns are nothing more than momentary choices that you repeat over and over again.

[04:41]

So a vow is a kind of karma, but it's karma which is in the direction of liberation or which is in the direction of freedom. So we don't call it karma. Although it functions panically the same way, we call it a vow or a miracle. So I drew last week this pyramid of karmic mass that you carry with you, and then the point of it, the point of the present moment in which you had some choice. And that picture is the same regardless of your spiritual condition.

[06:17]

The difference is For the average person, what you're doing here is pointing to the present. You're pretty much influenced by a lot of your habitual patterns. So you're not at all, in terms of choice, you're not at all free. Or if we're at a distorted plot, we can recognize these patterns, but you couldn't date them for a long time. Whereas, when someone has been able to free themselves of this, and after a time, there's a kind of space, a gap, in both directions. Not that you're free of it, but that you see all of it as being substantial, and it allows the purity of their intuition to function without the distorted events of

[07:21]

It's funny that there's a sort of implicit Western idea, maybe it has to do with the Christian idea of resurrection or some kind of celestial existence that doesn't involve the human body, but there's an idea that somehow a spiritually awakened person is some kind of superman or superwoman and doesn't get dead or isn't completely in control of all their functions and so forth. And this is a, this would be a rather discouraging idea when he was coming to me in a way because it would mean that that liberation rather than being the innate function of all human beings is some kind of you know, athletic event, kind of like being, you know, a few extraordinary people can do it, but the rest of you better forget it.

[08:35]

And so it's a rather, in a way, a rather narrow idea of a way to think that it's some kind of special power that you can get. Whatever sort of extraordinary may accrue to you is not really that much to do with spiritual practice as much as to, you know, some may count as having big muscles. Some people have. Some great saint, he could have read a secret, died fairly young, don't have died at 53, but He was actually one of the shortest-lived great teachers. Part of the reason, you know, if you're only 45 or 50, it means you can talk to all the other saints if you're not such good students. But he started so young, such a prodigy that even at a young age, he wrote so much.

[09:40]

He's quite renowned. But even then, many, the average age of great teachers in the living is about a usual 60, 70. They're not living longer than anybody else. They seem to, on the whole, die rather more, rather more, many of them sort of just announced they were going to die and got sent to die. They would be sent to come and work in prison. And on the whole, made no particular effort to, to, you know, to use some supernatural powers to cure yourself and prolong your life. There's lots of interesting stories that Zen teachers remind us. This is sort of a sidetrack, you know, one that comes to mind is Tozon, with To, Zoto. And now it's used with God, but it did.

[10:44]

And everybody was crying a lot, so we woke up, He said, look, this is ridiculous. Now, I'm not going to do this if you're going to make such a fuss. He stuck around for every week or so. Got everybody more prepared, and then the guy. The first time he didn't really die, he said, hold on, Francis. But there are also others, like Tsuji Roshi and many others, of people who died rather thankfully from some group. So this is just your past karma, mostly of having a body, which, from a Buddhist point of view, you chose to do. Coming home and being awakened or becoming Buddha doesn't have much effect on that at all. You need to exalt with that, regardless. And the Buddha's own death is rather ordinary. It's poison, food, antipatientary, lay down and die.

[11:47]

So, I'm just using your own biblical death as an example. The difference was important because he didn't bother from all that much. And he accepted it completely. didn't affect his state of mind much at all. There was some space around his present existence that gave some freedom or detachment from everything. So all of us have this ability which is actually available to us at any time. But on a whole the weight of our without practice or without some effort to evolve through the patterns of input which we develop. This potentiality to act freely at each moment is not actual. So, the values, you might say, put it the other way, if you talk, it stays the same.

[13:04]

It's a thought which mobilizes the full energy of your attention, rather than... The average attentional thought is mostly running on borrowed talent, running on the power of previous time and activity. So it takes its power, it borrows its power from some kind of recreated past which you recreate in the present. And thou is more like a thought which you create fully in the present. And he created them that way. And these refuges, which is the first three of the 16 of them, they're that kind of thing.

[14:12]

They're more like thou than some kind of statement for me or membership. Although it is true that the creed of refuges are what technically make you a Buddhist tradition. Someone who said this which you do before others and before some. They are what you would call roots. So one of the first things to examine is where exactly you apply it by. In Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, does it first of all apply some kind of exclusive? If by doing so, you limit or give up other possibilities. Refuge. As Akin Roshi says, the word refuge means something like go to protection, shelter, abode, refuge.

[15:21]

Then he says will or chosen resort. I guess maybe like last resort rather than last resort. What she resorted to. Returned to it. For a while, because she was using the phrase, now I return to the Buddha. Now I return to the Buddha. But now we've gone back to Repti. Repti is pretty good, I suppose. I think to understand what it means to take refuge, you have to acknowledge that we take refuge from often already, which may not be generally recognized, but already we take refuge in a great many. To really understand what is a product and take refuge

[16:28]

in the Three Jewels, one has to, at some point, before or after you've already exposed what refuges you already have. This may not be so easy to do. I think it's one of the main reasons to be sick. And one of the things that I, the first couple years of sin, there's a lot involved in this, is revealing to yourself what of what you actually take refuge in already. And many of the resistances and problems that come up in the early years of the city are basically forms of becoming aware of the extent to which you take refuge in things which are not the Buddha's teachings. The core refuge which we give up in Buddhist practice is the refuge in what David was just telling us recently, a prior inception of the story of the Buddhist singer, which is a fancy phrase for what Buddhism calls

[17:55]

of food and self. We're coming at fixed identity next to us. Prior perception. Inherent existence. That's the most compelling refuge. Other refuges are not there. Karmic refuges are born to that. Adjunct to that. One important adjunct according to, can we take refuge in our own thoughts? Or in our own thinking? I can actually believe in the reality of our own thoughts. So, for instance, the belief in inherent existence is an example of a repeated thought, a repeated kind of thought, of a visual thought.

[19:01]

It's no longer at the level of, you know, that you walk going through the day thinking to yourself, hey, I have a belief in higher conception of inherent existence. You know, it's embodied very deeply in the self, right? that kind of thought. So it's not something that's conscious at all. It's simply that your activity is colored by it or being by it all the time in various ways. It's a funny story that, this probably is true, I don't know, a funny story that you all kind of a general spiritual teacher who's probably quoted all these quotes. It sort of happened, somebody came to a teacher, I don't even know if it's a Buddhist quote, and said, I'd like to study the way, and she said, do it.

[20:11]

and how badly he didn't want to do it. And the person said, oh, it's the most important thing in my life. It's all I didn't want to do. The teacher stuck the pen into a nearby palm and held it down. So he practically drowned. Then when he came up for air, he asked him what was going on, what was the most important thing. I mean, that you confess that actually you're very interested in surviving during that time. So, you know, in a very simple, directly violent way, the teacher exposed this unconscious thought that, of course, we all have, that we're very used to want to survive. Of course, if you didn't have that thought, to some extent, you wouldn't survive. You'd be like... This is Billy in the slaughterhouse. Billy the slaughterhouse star in the scene where they demonstrate Billy's character with the star.

[21:19]

Billy's fantastic degree of passiveness is the scene in the flashback in which his father says, All right, Billy, we've been learning how to swim. He throws him into the pool. He sinks right in the pot. Billy! Billy! Billy! Uh, you know, that's, um, uh, I think that's the, what Bakerose is trying to bring out in the sense of high extension. But, uh, you know, it's alright to have some on-the-spot perception of self when it's useful. To be aware of not running the door or something like that. But, uh, to carry it around with you as an inherent quality is a problem. And, uh, That's a refuge. And so to take refuge with three jewels is partly to think about, to look at, or try to reveal what refuges you already have.

[22:28]

And it's not that I don't think, maybe I'm being overly, make me think, extra effort to be ecumenical, but I don't think that to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is a kind of statement of a religious belief which, you know, excludes anything else. Maybe you could say it includes the three jewels you brought, you might say it includes, particularly the second one, the Dharma. It could include, I suppose, any of that. So I think the underlying spirit is of the idea of taking refuge in the Buddha Dharma sound that is to take refuge in something which is not conditional, which is not part of your personal karmic

[23:34]

So it functions psychologically very much in the way we believe God is. Of course, someone who believes in God, that is to say, you might say someone who believes in a deity is taking refuge in something not part of their own person. But of course, there's not any explicit God mentioned in the three The Buddha, take refuge in the Buddha. According to Buddha, Buddha, the word Buddha needs a way to have participle be awake and awake.

[24:44]

And originally it was a title that was given to anyone who was awake. So the Buddha is the one who is awake. So in its most general sense it means to take refuge in the possibility of thorough awakening of which was exemplified by the historical Buddha and others who followed. So although it does mean to some extent to take refuge in the historical Buddha, part of it means to take refuge in the historical Buddha as an example of Buddhahood, of awakening. to take refuge in the possibility of being a human being, being a Buddha.

[25:48]

I've often been struck, particularly since I was younger, I studied the European existential philosophy And up to a certain point, you know, it's very Buddhist in the sense that you might say what was exposed by archaeology is the relativity of all refuges. That actually no refuge that anyone knew about was entirely reliable. One is actually a dilemma. Once you see through, the relativity or insubstantiality of every possible refuge, whether in ideology or religion or society or family. One is left rather in despair without such hope. So this refuge in Buddha is a leap out of that.

[27:02]

And I think all that gives us the confidence to do it is the reality that it has been done. I think without that, none of us would do it. So I think the truth provided by the continuity of the Sangha And the living pride of generations of good teachers is what gives us the confidence to take this refuge and make it stick and make it work. I would say of the three it's in the way the heart is.

[28:05]

Dharma and Sangha I think we accept more easily. So it means take refuge in that potential which we all have. I'd like to come back to the more universal side of refuge and the recognition of the Buddha putting everyone in debt, but practically speaking, taking refuge also means, particularly when you take the two steps formally, that is to say, from someone who gives them to you.

[29:11]

At the very least, you're taking refuge in the authority of the person who gives you the precepts as representing the authority of Buddhism. So traditionally in Buddhist countries, uh... people are given precepts that take the lay initiation some time in their life or often when they're writing down it may function somewhat the way confirmation functions in christianism but your intention to practice the way of the buddha is confirmed by receiving the precepts from someone who represents this possibility, represents the language. Not necessarily your spiritual teacher exactly, or someone you have a closed personal relation to, but some

[30:17]

And often in the Far East, anyway, these ceremonies would be quite huge. Thousands and thousands of people would all be seated at these recesses. And usually there would be some animals teaching. And often it would be preceded by a week or two of instruction. Actually, something like that. When you'd be instructed in. meaning of the precepts and how to be very practical. And also, for the average lay person, some re-experience of meditation, sitting in the temple. So, there were lay people, The periods of receiving the precepts formally and sincerely can be a kind of big thing to not go or do that.

[31:24]

In the Zen tradition, which emphasizes a relationship with a particular person whom you study, who then teaches Buddhism by the apprentice. To take refuge in the Buddha extends to that specific kind of relationship in which you create by your own intention. a relationship of trust with another person. So in Zen and other forms of Buddhism, like Tantric Buddhism, which emphasize a teacher, your attention or vow to the refuge in the Buddha creates a teacher for you.

[32:38]

This is something that's not generally recognized, but a teacher is not, it's just a new abstract. Well, so and so is a Buddhist teacher. We could say that with convenience, but The actual relationship of teacher and student is created by the student and by the teacher, but primarily by the person. You might say there's a sense of permission which is granted by the student. which sets up a relationship of mutual trust. And without that, the relationship doesn't exist. So in Zen, this is an important aspect.

[33:59]

The Buddha, the role of the creature is to represent that for you in your life. To represent that possibility for you. It may also be a more informal kind of in the sense that, you know, like many of you, you're, in a sense, participating in this particular sangha with this particular teacher, but you may not have made it specific and personal in the sense that, you know, someone who's released a sangha student, the word sangha means private dealings with the teacher. People often come and ask me, what are the complications between a son and a student?

[35:06]

And I answer in a way that people often feel is a little... a position for something that I think is actually just what it is, which is that the definition of it is that is that you go to, in this case, fake Russia, and say, I would like to be a socialist, too, and they say, yes, that's it. That's all there is to it. There's no other definition that said all that. Although, I think we don't allow people to apply to a university, well, if you want to. So it's not, it's actually not any more complicated than the state that I take where I can do that. But people may, you know, it may take years to become one to that point, and also people should not say yes to it. It has to be, you know, one of the numbers that is important. It has to be of a physical limit.

[36:10]

The usual Zen teacher traditionally accepts about 30, and we have 300. So I don't know what that means except Americans. One-tenth is spiritual, right? Would it only take up one-tenth of the amount of inner shield? No. Anyway, to be a Tantra student, to be someone's student is a form of this first... I wrote down something here which is more my own thought about taking refuge in the Buddha, which is actually something that is hard for people to acknowledge, but it's the fact that if someone could know something, there's actually the possibility that someone could know something.

[37:23]

Which I think is, right now, in present historic situations, something we doubt. there's a certain sense of skepticism, which probably is well-founded, that, well, maybe nobody really knows anything. How do I know that it's possible for somebody to know something? On the other hand, side by side, in fact, certain skepticism, maybe it's, you know, dialectically goes with it, is a sense of somewhat in a bit of an excursion, being willing to trust all kinds of things. You start to die as a medical victim, or something like that. Without much basis. Things run through our culture and society these days quite quickly as fads.

[38:26]

But it is spirulina, that's the way it is. But spirulina is... So, you know, people are willing to invest, you know, take refuge in all kinds of things, you know, rather feels almost as though we would very much like to believe that it's possible for someone to never stop breathing. So on this side, we're kind of acting that way. When anyone asks us directly, we turn, oh no, we don't make anyone else trust us. So again, the emphasis here is to make your refuge conscious.

[39:29]

It's right in front of you. This is exactly what you're doing. And the effort to make your refuge conscious does inevitably cause you to question the refuges that are already going on in your life. There is often some degree of inconsistency about all that. So oftentimes I think people take refuge in someone or something. for the sake of the security of taking refuge, but withhold at the same time the key ingredient which makes it work for you, which is the trust that is possible for someone to know something, or this potential to be awakened. So, you might say, to take refuge in something, there's a deep emotional need that we all have. It happens. That seems to be obvious.

[40:32]

Yeah, I just wanted to interject that comment that Vickie Rosey, from last week's question and answer, right, said that he felt a certain point in his practice when he decided that Vickie Rosey would be in the future, whether or not, anything, whether he would play, maybe he would make a ninja. He wasn't one. I remember reading in one of these, I think it was maybe Tartang Book, one of the books, who said, in Tibet, you know, there actually aren't too many musicians. But we treat the teacher as though he's somewhat great. We make him as our guru and we treat him that way. The interesting point here is which is a kind of subtle, almost dangerous point, is that on one side, you can make use of someone as your teacher.

[41:41]

You think they're maybe not so good, not the best teacher. On the other hand, if you take refuge in that person behind you, that's not so good either, because then and a scrupulous person to take advantage of very easily. So the need for refuge is very small, but at the same time, if, in fact, you're willing to take refuge in someone who is a perfect, it should have that sense of consciousness, that what she said. I'm taking refuge in this person acknowledging that we may be a she-man who is a perfect. And with some sense of balance, skepticism, sense of time, I think cultures like Tibetan culture, Indian culture, where there's much more emphasis on a kind of total emotional surrender to the guru.

[42:43]

What balances that is not your own personal sense of judgment or perspective or skepticism, but the cultural peer system, which sort of roughly figures out who is reputable, who isn't, who is worthy of trust, who isn't. And in most traditional cultures which have some kind of tradition like that, you have a kind of network of pure relationships which determine who is going to be acknowledged or allowed to compete with. And if some spiritual leader gets out of line, there are others to sort of help them. So part of what is lacking at this point in the West is a structure like that. So we mostly have to rely on our own internal sense of what is authentic and what is not.

[43:55]

It's not so well with that as it may be a few years. The last point which I mentioned, of course this basic idea that Buddhahood is something which is everyone's possibility, means that to take refuge in the Buddha is about to relate to other people.

[44:55]

as though that were so, to relate to each person as a potential Buddha. But this isn't changed, you know, practically speaking, from taking refuge in a more limited sense of taking care of yourself, or you could take refuge in your own potential for Buddha, but you don't have to settle in someone else's. That's a possibility. And, you know, the broadest idea of Buddhahood is that it is something that everyone has equal access to. Does this affect your relationships with people?

[46:02]

Or you can actualize that sense of seeing each person as on the path, or as someone whose deepest need or desire is to be Buddha. It puts our human relationships in somewhat different perspective. As you might say, we can, for the majority of precepts, which follow, which are an outcome of this more fundamental sense that each being, not even human beings, but each being is, is kind of the nature of the life of the being. The implications are very broad.

[47:23]

I would like to think of the army for example as like the way it was made in America. They had a clear sense when they conquered that they were killing someone very much like themselves. So they would apologize and they would explain how this kind of extended. They would explain to the slain creature why they were killed and for what reason. The way you would explain to, if you decided to kill your friend to know the truth, you would pay a lot of respect to your friend. You would explain, look, I'm sorry that I have a leak, but I will make good use of your body. Use your stimulus from the photo. And they had that sense, of course, and they... They also had a sense that if they didn't do that, the deer would not participate.

[48:31]

Process the runaway and not be around. So they had a sense that it was some kind of mutual affair that the deer made themselves available and the community took what was needed. I don't think you should romanticize it too much. I think there were probably lots of selfish, dumb people who didn't want to do the quick work and the nice. But on the whole, I think their culture much more emphasized a sense of the weight and quality of everything. And their relationship with things, I think, much more embodied that the hard side of things. So this affects your relationship with other human beings and also other non. I don't think this class will be much of a forum for discussion of rebirth, incarnation, but one of the many ways in which one can understand that doctrine is that it expresses

[49:50]

the flow or continuity of action in all forms of life. But it is independent of all forms of life, or one great being of all life. And that, uh, uh, to see the light of the pole as Buddha or as the way it is. It's the widest of what we mean by this. So I gave a lecture about this last week. One of the things I found myself saying is I was sitting in Main Street looking out the window just like here. I saw a tree back there. If you examine the tree closely, you'd see a tremendous protection from the fall.

[51:06]

And intermittently, most of us have that kind of insight to be refreshed by our walks in the woods. But to take refuge in the Buddha means to to actually live with that insight and respect continuously, presently, more and more. One of the things that continually amazes me in a way is that with modern science we have the ability to actually know how totally vast and complex the universe is, yet it doesn't seem to affect our life at all. Whenever I hear about one of these people that thinks the Earth is flat, that's why I still hear about the people who think that it's all a flop, it's a communist flop that the Earth is now.

[52:14]

Actually, I sympathize with it, because actually the world is flat, you know, for most people. Even if you're honest with yourself, you know, you live it. Conveniently, that would be Earth is flat. The scientists on the whole who know these things experientially don't necessarily live any different way, maybe less so. So to shift your perceptions so that you're living more like the Earth actually is around or that a leak actually does affect you is a fairly significant shift. Which I think, if you wanted to characterize you or the people that come to it, you might say a Buddhist, I think it's a sexist Buddhist, I would say that's probably the best way to characterize those people who in their lives try to make that kind of shift and try to then accord with that.

[53:23]

And it really is a fundamental shift that world people If you talk to somebody who has not made that shift, you're not able to connect very well. It's a real deal. Luckily, we live in a very tolerant

[53:41]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_73.9