This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So, good to see you, everyone. Yesterday's talk clearly drove some people far away. I'm hoping I don't do that again. It's hard to know what topics when you don't know the people you're going to communicate. So I chose karma for today. So I'm going to talk about karma. And for a long time I've thought karma is a really good idea. It's an important idea. But I'm going to tell you a story. Something happened to me that made me really certain that it is a good idea. Here's the story. I'm in Montana with a friend. And he's not from Montana, but there's a family relationship.

[01:01]

We have a cabin that we've got for the week. We're going to go hike in the mountains, and we'll be in Montana. We've got a Jeep. We go off the county paved road and dirt roads for a long time. And then we go up this mountain, like this mountain, like treacherous. And we finally get to the cabin, and we get out of the Jeep. We've been in it for a long time. It's like, oh, fresh air. It's wonderful. But then we hear this sound. It's And we looked down, and one of the tires is leaking on the Jeep. And so we said, oh, we better check. We didn't check the spare tire. It's a borrowed Jeep. And it turns out there is no spare tire. So here we are, way out of any range where a tow torque could ever get. So we look at each other. We immediately, without sitting in, jump back in the Jeep. We're flying down this mountain. and knowing that we at least have to get down to relatively flat ground before a tow truck or anybody could ever help us. So, you know, we're driving irresponsibly fast down this mountain.

[02:02]

Finally get down to flat ground where, you know, although we're still on dirt roads, but, you know, somebody could get in to help us. Okay. We stop the car just to catch our breath, and we get out. We can hear the thumping on the rim of the tire. We get out. Turns out now all four tires are not just flat, they are ripped to shreds from my driving down the mountain the way I did. Okay, so, you know, Greenhorn, City Slickers, not knowing Montana at all, it was slate or some kind of rock that's razor sharp. And so when you drive over it, you got to go really slowly. So we popped one tire buzzing up and the other three coming down. But we're okay. It's not the way we wanted to start this trip, but we hike out. This is about 20 years ago or so. I think I had a cell phone, but Montana, good luck. So finally we get to somebody's cabin. Somebody's got a phone. Call, tow truck. Guy says, oh, yeah, you're up by John Harper's place.

[03:04]

Sure, I'll be up there. I said, okay. And it took me about an hour. An hour later, tow truck driver pulls up. He loads up our car, now undriveable totally, and drives back into town. Meanwhile, we've got an hour drive, so we're talking about Montana. And we ask about his life, and he says, well, I wasn't always a tow truck driver. Not too long ago, my occupation was a dog breeder. And he raised hunting dogs, he said, and good ones. Like he was getting $6,000 per dog, and he had 30 dogs at any one time. He was making a lot of money getting to live in Montana as the dog whisperer that he was. And so he had a great life. So I said, well, okay, great life, good gig. Why are you driving tow trucks? And he says, well, that's where it all began. He says he had a neighbor who was this curmudgeonly old gruff hermit, a large guy who was his neighbor, but Montana neighbor, we're talking about half a mile away.

[04:07]

And the neighbor kept saying to him, better shut them dogs up. And that's all he would say, better shut them dogs up. And then one day he said, better shut them dogs up or I'll take care of it. And my tow truck driver said, well, wait a minute. You step one foot on my property. There is serious trouble here. And I'm totally within my legal rights to have dogs in this property. You don't like it, there's the highway, you can move, but don't mess with me at all. And so he thought that probably, the guy didn't say anything, thought that would take care of it. But not too many days later, he says, he's telling this story, he's been out getting supplies for four or five hours, comes back, all the dogs are dead or dying with... poison-laced meat thrown over the fence, the pen that they're in, and, you know, it's a hot day, and they're, you know.

[05:08]

So he's bawling, he says. I mean, this is a rough Montana mountain man, but he says, I was just crying, and just unbelievably in pain, and he gathers up the three or four dogs that are still alive, puts him who's picked up, races him to tend to the vet. Time he's there, they're all dead. All 30-some dogs are dead. And he doesn't even talk to the vet. He just gets in his truck, and he says, he'd made his decision here and there. He's going to get his shotgun, and he's going to drive his pickup right through the front door of this mountain hick and come out gunning. So he says he did. He got his gun. He got his pickup, and he drives down to this neighbor's house, but he notices the neighbor's pickup is missing. And so, obviously, he's not there, and so he said, okay, he's almost out of gas, drives into town, gets gas. But when he's at the gas pump at the one gas station, he meets the minister of, in town was called the preacher, he's a Baptist preacher, of the one church in town.

[06:16]

And, you know, everybody knows everybody in this town, and the preacher says, Jack, how's it going? And Jack is just wanting to speak to him. And he says, Jack, you okay? And he won't speak. So the preacher finally says, Jack, okay, something's wrong. Tell me. And he just bursts out into tears he described. He's bawling, he's crying, telling the story. It's half deep sadness about the dogs, and the other half just fury, anger, uncontrollable anger. And finally the preacher says, well, what are you going to do about it? And he says, I'm going to take care of it. And the preacher says, no. Don't do that. That's wrong. And Jack says, well, eye for an eye, two for two, killed my dogs. He's killing me. He ripped my heart out. He's done. I'm going to do him in. And the preacher says, no, you cannot do that. And Jack says, well, why?

[07:16]

And here's the point of the story. The preacher says, karma. Okay, so Jack says, karma? What is karma? You know, he's a Baptist preacher. And so the preacher begins to explain the theory of karma. He says, every act has its own consequences built into it. That this despicable, scummy old guy did that, there are outcomes, and he'll get them, I promise. Now, if you're to go and do the same, you're going to go kill him, murder him, hurt him in any way. That makes you the same. You're going to be just like him. You will be a killer. You will be a murderer. So you'll have the same karma. And the preacher also says, he's going to hell. You do that, you're going to hell with him. And so they kept talking. So they're there at the gas pump. He says, at least a half hour. Cars waiting to get in. They're just wrapped on each other.

[08:16]

And the preacher's explaining karma to him. He's saying how every choice you make, is etched into your character. You can't escape it. It's what you do will come back to you immediately. You are immediately the kind of person who has done what you're going to do. Not just later. And so you just can't do this. He says, the tow truck driver, now back to our conversation, says, totally changed my life. I realized, right, this is completely wrong. I can't do this. I mean, I still hate this guy. I'm burning with anger. But... Somehow it had pacified to the point where he said, okay, so the preacher said, come on, let's go to the sheriff. At first he had said, no, I don't want the sheriff, he won't do anything, there won't be justice. And now he's saying, okay. So they went to the sheriff, the sheriff went out, arrested the guy apparently, and more of that story later. In any case, so there we are driving the tow truck, and here's this tow truck driver.

[09:18]

explaining karma to me in utter detail. And finally, we're almost at the gas station where it's going to fix our car. He says, oh, well, what do you guys do? And, you know, what I'm going to say, I'm a professor of karma. So I said, oh, nothing. I just... My life isn't half as interesting as yours. So he got his tires and took us back. But anyway, I began to think, okay, karma is this universally known... a universally applicable principle of moral outcome that is quite incredible. So, the preacher, you know, he's a preacher, he's got his own resources to draw on to say why the tow truck driver should not do this, right? He can say, God forbids it, you'll go to hell, you know, there's lots of things he can say. But he knows, because everybody in town knows each other, he knows this guy's not a Christian. He doesn't believe in God. He doesn't believe in heaven or hell. And so the resources that he had as a Christian minister would have no effect.

[10:24]

You're not going to change his mind about murdering this guy. But if you explain karma and innate consequences, then you get some outcome. Okay, so I realize if, you know, decades ago, a... creature in rural Montana, knows about karma, understands it, and teaches it in his society, this idea is somehow universally applicable. Everybody could think this thought. There's nothing you'd have to believe in one version of karma, and we'll get to that. So, anyway, I just thought, okay, brilliant, ingenious idea. It focuses on choice and decision-making. It also focuses on the habits that you allow yourself to develop and fall into. Daily practice means everything, right? What do you do with your time? How do you spend your time? And what are your daydreams that go through the day?

[11:26]

All of that is encompassed here. into the outcome of karma. You are constantly shaping yourself. It's self-sculpting, as we mentioned, talking about meditation. Self-sculpting through your own actions. So, back to those of you here to hear me yesterday, I gave a long phrase called experience-dependent neuroplasticity, meaning that the neurologic system of the brain has a plasticity, a changeable quality, Depends upon the experience that you have, right? What you do and what you do with your time, how you shape your time, the acts you do, shapes your brain and then your brain sets the stage for choices that you're going to make. Okay, so all of that is karma. That's how karma works in some literal physiological sense. So in... There's a word in ancient Greek for character, the kind of character you have as a human being.

[12:31]

It's linked to the word of engraving, which is wonderful because every act you do engraves that kind of act into your character a little more deeply. especially your habits you do every day, you're digging ruts in your brain, right? Or, in more technical terms, you're making neurological connections that makes that behavior more likely, more potent, more immediately accessible in terms of brain structure. So, in Buddhist texts, karma is often talked about through agricultural metaphors. So, it's like the acts you do, the things you do in the world, plant seeds... that are done in your unconscious, and those seeds will, over time, come to fruition in acts that you perform. So it's all worked out in these agriculture metaphors. By the way, there are lots of seats in here. If all of you want to come in, there's plenty of room, but you're welcome. Stay out if you want. Okay.

[13:32]

So I began to think then about, you know, what... how would karma need to be understood in Buddhism? I realize, you know, there's lots of different ways in both Buddhism and Hinduism. Remember, karma is a universal Indian word, and Buddhists get it from earlier Brahmanical Indian traditions. And so trying to think out, well, how can this concept, how do we take the resources from these traditions and make that concept really work in our world? contemporary global setting, to motivate us morally and to help us understand what our acts are doing to us. And so I have several ways of understanding karma that I think are problematic, and I'm going to tell you about those and try to pull it back into a version of the concept that I think does work, but you tell me. And again, I'm going to try to leave some time for you to...

[14:34]

talk, ask questions, make comments. Okay, so the first one is that karma is like the Christian and Islamic notions of Judgment Day and Heaven and Hell. Karma serves to kind of guarantee that there's cosmic justice, that in the end, justice wins out. So if you're in the Christian tradition, Things may go badly in this life, but in the long run, you know, things work out. You will get what you deserve. Karma does that when it's linked with the idea of rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism. And so it's like a guarantee that justice is done. The thing that's unique about karma is that it's not that there is a divine maker of karma. There's no God who's making this work. It's that that's the nature of things. Karma is just the nature of things. That's the way your brain works. That's the way reality is.

[15:36]

So it's a built-in mechanism that doesn't take a series of beliefs about it to make it work. Except for rebirth, we'll get to that. But the problem is, in this lifetime, we all know that justice is not always done. Sometimes criminals get caught and get punished adequately for what they do. Sometimes good people, lots of times, good people are really rewarded for their generosity and their compassion and so on. But sometimes that's not true. We all know that corporate criminals sometimes thrive. And, you know, it's discovered after they die that they were really bilking the poor or their employees or who knows what. And we all know that occasionally a completely innocent, wonderful person... just gets killed, you know, eaten up by cancer or run over by a truck. Or that seven-year-olds who can't possibly have, you know, done anything to deserve being hit by a truck or die of some rare cancer.

[16:37]

There's no deserving there. So all of these religions know that so that the promise of justice is not in this lifetime, it's in the future. And so in other traditions, it's in a hereafter world. And in Buddhism, karma is linked to the idea of rebirth or Buddhism or reincarnation in Hinduism to say that, well, the bad guy will get what he deserves in his next life, right? He will be degraded in circumstances. And so you can count on it. Even though it's not the way you experience it so much in this life, you can count on it. Okay. Well, but the concept of... reincarnation or rebirth requires a little bit of a leap of faith in the same way that believing in heaven and hell does. And I know that in this room there are people for whom rebirth makes complete sense and you're just on it and that sounds right and others for whom it's really a dubious idea.

[17:39]

I know that those differences exist here. But But it does require, because the evidence that we have doesn't really show us that we both are true, nor does it show us that God's judgment and heaven and health are true. You know, there takes a bit of a metaphysical leave to get to those conclusions. Not everybody can arrive at this conclusion. So in the same way that Jack wasn't going to be persuaded by going to hell from the preacher, lots of people aren't going to be persuaded by don't worry, in your next life it will all work out. All right, so for some people, and this includes me, this is kind of grim, but for me, mostly the evidence shows that the cosmos is indifferent to human moral matters. It makes a huge difference to us as human beings, but the universe doesn't care so much, right?

[18:40]

If a fawn, a baby deer, gets ravaged by a mountain lion, it's not fair, but that's just the way the world works. And if an asteroid explodes this planet, well, we're gone. There is just a kind of cosmic big picture where human justice is beyond insignificant. It's not even on a map. So in terms of contemporary physics and astronomy and so on, that's the way we think about it. And so for me, in order to think clearly with everybody in the world with contemporary thinking standards, you can't include lots of leaps of faith like, don't worry, you'll be reborn. So better, it seems to me, to think of justice as a human matter, It's our concept. It's our invention. It's one of the best ones we ever come up with. But it's up to us to see that it's done to the extent that we can. Don't count on the universe to take care of it for us.

[19:41]

So that's a start. And that leads me to a second, what I think possible problem with some ways that the idea of karma is interpreted, the way it's understood. And that's that some people... where karma is just the assumed way things are and rebirth, are politically disempowered by the idea. That is, they don't see any reason to have to change things. If justice is done, justice is done. You don't have to worry about things. Now, not everybody in karma-believing countries thinks that about karma, but enough do fall into that. So, if there's a child being abused in your neighborhood, you can look at it and say, well, you know, they're repaying evil deeds in some past life. It's terrible. Yes, I meant it's awful. But justice is always being done.

[20:44]

And the abusive father, in this case, turns terrible things to a child. Justice will be done. There will be justice. for us as a community to interfere. You know, we don't need to. We want to, but we don't need to. So, there is a possible way to think about karma that sort of pulls the rug out from under you politically and says that all the things in your society that are wrong will be taken care of. You don't have to do things about them. You don't have to engage and begin to take care of them. Now, again, this is... Just one way that sometimes karma and rebirth are put together, and it's certainly not true of many Buddhists, but it's true of some. It's just a tendency that you sometimes find. So again, if we just wait for justs to be done, injustices will be done all around us, and from my point of view at least, we should be.

[21:51]

engaging, we should be doing things. I mean, both direct activity to stop wrongs, but also political moves to ensure that fewer corporate criminals are robbing their employees of their pensions, that there's a larger system of justice. It's always limited, it's always human justice, but at least take a shot at it. Don't wait for the universe to take care of it for us. dig in and do what we can. Okay, so that's two ways that I think you can go astray with karma. Here's a third one, and these are all kind of linked. And here I'm borrowing an idea from Aristotle, which helps out, a distinction between rewards that are internal to an act that you might do, and others that are external to the act. And let me explain what that means. Okay.

[22:55]

Internal rewards for anything you do, there are internal rewards for that, that are built into it. They naturally come back to you, inevitably. They always do. External rewards will sometimes come to you and sometimes not. You never know. They're contingent. They depend on other things. So, for example, and there are occasions of injustice that we all know, that sometimes you're working hard at your company and you're getting lots of things done, but you get no praise for it. And the boss... gives a raise and a higher position to this slug who's been working next to you, who's done nothing, but who pleases the boss in some other way. So, totally unjust. But the internal, the external rewards then are completely unjust, right? You didn't get what you deserved. And I'll bet every one of us, I have a couple of those in my life, I think. Damn, that wasn't fair.

[23:57]

I'm sure many of you do too. Okay, so external rewards are, you know, you do a great thing. You maybe get money, maybe get fame, maybe get praise, maybe get liked, maybe get friends. You know, all kinds of good things come as external rewards. Nothing wrong with external rewards. It's just that they're contingent, right? They might happen. They might not happen, right? So take an act of generosity and kindness. So you... that do something, you go out of your way to help a stranger, a good Samaritan kind of thing, just really help this person out, somebody who's in serious trouble, and you do it, okay? Then let's say, turns out, after you didn't know this, and you just did it because you were being kind to this person, This person's really rich and their family rewards you with great sums of money. Or let's say they're, you know, this person's really a rock star and you get to do great things with the group and you get some fortune out of it. Or, you know, you can all think of good things that might come out of having done this.

[24:58]

Or at least everybody admires you, you get crazed, you know, everybody thinks, wow, you know, Dale's a good guy. Okay, those are all external rewards. They might not happen. So take the same thing you did. Maybe that person is a little bit off or misunderstands what you did and totally blames you, goes to the police, charges you with something. You spend a night in jail on this misunderstanding. Absolutely no reward, no praise. This person hates you because they think you did something when really you saved their life. So external rewards can't always be counted on. Mostly they come, but... you just never know what's going to happen. So any act is subject to both of these kinds of rewards. So what kind of rewards are internal? An act of kindness incrementally makes you a kinder person. It opens you more. It gives you feelings of well-being. It opens the possibility of love for you.

[26:00]

It makes you able to trust others to a greater extent. It does things to the community around you. All of those things happen no matter, even if you got whipped for doing the good thing, you still get those things because you know what you did, right? Okay. So the internal rewards are absolutely natural. They never, you know, you never miss them. Okay. So As long as karma is primarily linked to internal rewards, I think it works brilliantly, but when you connect it to external rewards, then you start to get into trouble. And Buddhists do that sometimes. Even Buddhists, as great as the Dalai Lama, following in a Tibetan tradition, he's going on about, if you steal, you will, in the future, lose all of your possessions and you'll have to live in poverty. Well, maybe, maybe not, but clearly he's talking about rebirth. Okay, if it doesn't happen to you in this lifetime, well, the next, or the next, or the next.

[27:02]

Where in Tibetan Buddhism was the one where rebirth is most important to that kind of Buddhism. In Zen, probably the least, even though some do. Okay. Okay, so in this case... Only the concept of rebirth, when you put that together with karma, makes it plausible to say that if you steal, you will live in poverty. Because we know that there are rich, scummy people who die, and there are very good people that die in poverty and terrible circumstances, and it just isn't just and external rewards. But there is this tradition where you're thinking rebirth, And you say that. And what does it do? Well, the same thing that in Christianity or in Islam, you say, you know, heaven and hell are waiting there. It motivates good behavior, right? If you say that about rebirth, you're more likely to even selfishly care.

[28:04]

Well, I care what I'm going to be in my next life. Okay. But, you know, again, if we're not so certain about the concept of rebirth, then we're better off with internal rewards, which, you know, go together with the kind of interior work that everybody here is doing and everybody everywhere ought to be doing. So external rewards, contingent, they don't always happen. Living morally always shapes your character, right? It engraves you in a certain way that makes you, it gives you a better life. And it also shapes your community, those around you. Okay? That's third. I want to talk about one more. I hope I'm not overwhelming you here. But the last one has to do with karma in a sense of its connection to a community. This is a community. I'll talk about this a little bit. Usually in Buddhism and in Hinduism, karma is conceived individually. That is, it's your karma.

[29:06]

So you picture yourself as... doing acts and the rewards or punishments for those acts come back to you as an individual. But we all know and we understand that what we do affects not just ourselves, it affects other people around us. So the individualistic conception of karma misses something really important, which is karma and community and family and connection. So when When Buddhists think of karma in this way, it's as though in rebirth, it's like they're picturing their lives as going down through a glass tube and they're sealed off from everybody else. Everybody's got their own glass tube. And you're kind of slipping through this and into another life, into another life. But the karma is always yours, right? Whereas if you really think about the meaning of your acts, what you do, karma radiates out into others, right? Everybody feels the impact of what you do. in major ways. So it's really something that is larger than my individual karma.

[30:13]

And from my point of view, in order to really think this deeply, Buddhists have to break out of that individualism. But again, that's linked to the idea of rebirth. When you put karma together, rebirth, it's my rebirth, it's my karma. And so the individualistic implications of that, I think, are... are misleading in Buddhism. They go in the wrong direction. But again, not all Buddhists do that. And Mahayana Buddhism, of course, which Zen is a part, is big boat Buddhism. So everybody's in this together. What I do with my life completely affects you and everybody else and everybody else, both in the positive and the negative sense. There is nobility of character, there is wisdom, and there is corruption of character. And we all know what... It means to be around somebody who's deeply corrupt. So let's think about, even here at Tassajara, let's say, I mean, this is as elevated a community of human beings that you will ever encounter anywhere in your entire life.

[31:19]

People here are here for a reason. Their minds are open. They are engaged in practice. This is a world historical community. But let's say somebody who comes here looks like one of you, but is really a thief. And let's say some of you, one of you, me maybe, is stealing. I'm breaking into your room and I'm grabbing stuff. Nobody knows. And this goes on in every work circle. I misplaced my watch. Somehow my wallet's gone. On and on and on. And this goes on and it goes on. It goes on. Well, what happens to us as this brilliant community? There's just one person. We begin to distrust each other. We begin to go to the leadership of Tassar and say, I want locks on those doors. I know my jewelry was in that room and I know where I put it.

[32:21]

We need locks on the doors. And so, gradually, we all begin to separate, right? There's just one person, but it totally corrupts the sense of the community. If it goes on long enough, what's going to have to happen? The leadership Tassar is going to have to say, okay, everybody, you're in a morning circle. I want everybody here. You stand here. We're going to go through everybody's room. Inspection, right? So, like, police state. And this goes on, and it goes on, and it goes on. these acts of corruption corrupt not that individual I mean individuals in serious karmic trouble but it's slowly what are you doing when you're doing zazen who is that you can't focus because there's something going on in your community that mandates your attention so that one thing ruins everything that one person So karma needs to be conceived collectively, not just as this little community that's Tassara, but there's this county, and then there's the state of California, and then there's the United States, and then there's the global society.

[33:34]

We have to think of ourselves in that larger, larger, larger sense. Okay. So, again... It's, I'm not so picking on the idea of rebirth, but it's rebirth that encourages people to think karma individualistically. Because as a Buddhist or a Hindu, you're worried about your rebirth, right? And it's your karma. But in Buddhism, the point of the practice is to explode that kind of self-concern. take you out of yourself so that it's not just worrying about yourself. Open you up so that you relate to the world in a fundamentally different way. So there are some implications of the linking of karma and rebirth that have those difficulties connected to them.

[34:36]

And it also... Okay, let me put it this way. In Buddhism... If you take rebirth really seriously and really literally, then there's not much that no self can mean in Buddhism. So if rebirth means a lot, you're really assuming I am a self and my karma is coming to myself. So no self loses weight, and so does dependent arising and interdependence of all things. If you take no self and dependent arising seriously, it goes like this, there's not much left for rebirth to mean. If you don't think of you as having a soul that gets reborn, then things go the other way. So Buddhists are in all kinds of places on this spectrum or this balance. I don't want to talk more about rebirth now, but if you want to ask questions, I'm happy to. So, what do we have then? If karma means that...

[35:43]

There is a full accountability that you have for not just the big things you do, the big acts you perform, but for everything you do, the moment-to-moment state of mind that you allow yourself to fall into, the practices that you engage. Karma is the natural internal rewards outcome to that. It works brilliantly as a principle of accountability. Whatever life you come to, you are responsible for creating that life. Now, you're not completely responsible, right? Because there are other things that affect your life besides what you do, right? I mean, we're just finite beings, right? So your family has affected you, your community affects you, your historical epic affects you, your society, all of these things have shaped you. But given all of those things, you have this range of freedom... of choice and accountability.

[36:45]

And to the extent that you work well, poorly, within that sphere, determines karmically how things go for you. But you may still get hit by a truck or die of cancer immediately. I mean, those things are beyond us. So we have to... throw up our hands in a certain way and say, life is a gift and we get what we get in all senses of the word. But if we get what all of you got, which is the capacity to think spiritually and to engage in a life of practice, then in some sense you have been given the gift of freedom and can grow that freedom and build it. And for me, the concept of karma is incredibly effective in in its capacity to do that. Okay, as always, I have plenty more to say on this, but I think I should shut up and let you pose some questions or give counter thoughts or examples, so think of what you've got and we'll talk about that.

[38:02]

Yes? Yeah, thank you so much. And I'm really intrigued by the idea of justice. And I want to make sure that I understand your definition of human justice. Yeah. It's being that good people will be rewarded and bad people will be punished. In certain ways, yes. Yeah. And I guess my reaction to that is just like, ah, you know, my experience has been that acting out of fear of punishment and acting to get a certain reward isn't as valuable to me as acting from a place that's integrity with my values, or like contributing or supporting someone. And so I'm wondering, it seems very behavioralist, that definition of justice. I wonder if that is an ancient definition as well, or if there were other definitions of justice that you're drawing on. Well... First of all, remember the distinction between internal and external. That's really important here.

[39:03]

So all of the outcomes that you just talked about, those are all external things that we try in our society to give justice. So we want a society that gives equal pay for equal work. And we want all these things, and we do what we can to bring them back. But those are all external rewards. The internal rewards is the depth of character that comes as a result of engaging in life in certain ways. And so the definition of justice and just common sense that people, you know, we have a sense of desert. It's part of our... you know, system, that some people deserve some things and some people don't. And we all deserve to a greater or lesser extent. And we think that justice is not done when somebody's not rewarded for what they do. And we think that justice is not done when somebody's rewarded for doing something bad.

[40:07]

So, I'm not sure what to say beyond that. Maybe you're misunderstanding me and maybe I'm misunderstanding you. It sounds like, maybe you can check in and see, so that you wanted to distinguish between internal and external rewards, and maybe what I'm saying about the integrity is part of the internal reward. It is. Yeah. It is. To become a person of integrity is the outcome of many, many acts of wisdom and compassion and understanding, and you have... You engrave that in your character through doing that. Yeah, so those are internal rewards, and you'll always get those, right? A person of integrity can be the poorest, most downtrodden person in our culture, but still be somebody who has that integrity. But external rewards are different. People get praised for integrity, don't necessarily have integrity.

[41:09]

And people get praise for lots of things, don't necessarily have anything that deserves that praise. And we have a society that rewards lots of people for what many of you would probably agree are stupid things. And don't give praise to people who do extortion. So, you know, our system of rewards is skewed. But we still have a system and we still work on it. We've got a court system we don't trust, but we'd rather have that court system than no court system. But again, what we want is to always be honing our sense of justice. Not very many decades ago, sense of justice among women and men was perfectly fine that women didn't get paid the same or anything for doing the same work that men did. And that seemed fine. So there is an evolution of our concept of justice. We now understand, well, no. There's lots of things we now understand that people in the past didn't.

[42:12]

You know, 500 years ago, well, let me go back even further, neither the Buddha nor Jesus said anything negative about slavery. Slavery was part of both their societies, and they both mentioned it, but neither one was going out saying, you know, free the slaves, this is terrible. It was just kind of an assumed part of those societies. And for now, you know, your eyelids go, what? Because now, you know, for us, slavery is an evil beyond belief. So the whole sense of good and evil goes through historical evolution and will continue to go through it. That's a sidetrack. That's way back. Yesterday you talked about... I can't remember exactly what we talked about, grace. The concept of grace is something gratuitous, gratuitous love. Which, of course, is outside of an economy of cause and effect, of retribution.

[43:17]

So I wonder to what extent we'll be talking today about internal and external. That in fact, by suggesting that one not look, not expect too much on the external level, cause and effect of attribution, but look into the internal. In a sense, the internal is more hooked into that idea of grace, something that's gratuitous, and that you may grow from spiritually, but you shouldn't expect mechanically this cause and effect kind of... getting payback on my investment. Right. That's excellent. And so we should be bowing in thankfulness that internal rewards are worked into our very DNA.

[44:22]

That it's the way our culture and ourselves work. So it's like an act of grace. It's not that there's a divine being letting this be true, which we typically think in Zen at least, but it just is true. Grace can be also a relief. You can be graced by... I've got some of these in my life where I've done some things that I really ought not to have done. And... circumstances ended up making me really learn something from that. Both when I got caught and when I didn't, I realized the impact of what I did and changed my life. So that's like... That didn't come to me. It was like a bolt of lightning out of the heavens came to me and realized something about what I need to do in my own life.

[45:24]

Okay, others... It seems like the concept of karma really shifts if we think about it for a while, not so much as the creators of karma as the recipients of karma. Okay. So for me, it's been most active as a practice tool in thinking, well, okay, I got this, what my teacher calls a boatload of karma. right and in the boat is some pretty serious difficulty coming down from the past and in the boat is also apparently something other than that difficulty or we would not be sitting here having this conversation and you know one of the first things that my teacher said to me when I started practicing was you if you practice you will not only clean up your own karma but you actually have the capacity to bring relief to the ancestors and thereby stop that karma from moving forward. And so for me, it's really, I mean, obviously that is connected to the question of then what kind of karma are you creating in the world? But if we shift it to think of it as recipients of it, I feel like it's a different kind of accountability because all we have to say is knowing that we can never know

[46:31]

the outcome of our actions, we can say, well, I have a pretty clear sense of what's come to me, and I'm not going to allow certain things to continue insofar as it's within my power to do that. Okay, that's brilliant. So that's both communal, that there is karma coming to us as whatever we are, Californians, Buddhists, so on. But there's also your own karma coming to you. And there is a place for blaming yourself, to be sure. I can relate to the necessity of self-blame because I have screwed up more times than I can count. But you can get into an overload on self-blame. And so to have a 10-year-old blaming herself for being abused in her family about what happened in a previous life is probably not helpful for that child. But for an adult to recognize that my screwing up this time is related to a pattern of development that I've been doing over time, and it's my screw-up, and I really own that, I've done it, that kind of self-blame is essential and healthy.

[47:51]

Blaming your culture and your society is not so great, but... But realizing that whatever comes to you is ultimately, down to scientific detail, the result of dependent horizon, that basic Buddhist concept. Whatever it is right now totally depends on what has happened in myriad complexity in the past among everybody and everything. So right now, this moment has been caused and made possible by the past. And that kind of sense of the largeness of things is also important. Okay, others? Yes? Yeah, so, we're talking quite a bit about internal reward. And, I mean, there must obviously be the concept of internal punishment. Yeah, same thing.

[48:54]

Rewards, good or bad. Yeah, just checking because, I mean, just for an example, you know, maybe people, well, be it the CEO or something, you know, getting rich off his employees' pensions, scamming and not getting away with those. I don't think he does, you know, even in this life. Yeah. So the internal rewards both went direct. Yeah. So Bernie Madel. He did get caught towards the end of his life. He scammed all of these retired people out of their life savings. I mean, just he's conscious. I don't think he speaks very well. I hope not. If he does, more so. That's right. That's what's internal about it. In his case, he actually went to jail. In other cases, they don't. So, yeah, totally positive and negative. It goes equally both directions, up and down. I once had a this was actually a Hindu friend said to me I don't get the Christian idea of heaven and hell so he gives this example he says what if okay let's say you and I are friends what if I we live we're friends our lives are about the same but

[50:13]

I just make the cut and I get to go to heaven. You know, we're kind of good, we're kind of bad, we're in the middle. And I just make the cut. But you just miss the cut. So basically, the quality of our lives was basically the same. And I'm sucking grapes in heaven and you're roasting in hell. And that's not fair at all. And the concept of karma takes that matter of degree totally into account. So everybody... will get internally what they deserve exactly in proportion to what they have done. External rewards won't match that, but there's a precision to it that doesn't work so well with the heaven and hell model. That's an aside. Yes? Because I have a background of working in social justice issues, social work issues that really... take a more societal view of things.

[51:14]

It's really difficult for me to see how the logic of karma works at a social level, especially, I'm in Chicago, a very segregated society, city, where we're facing shootings on a daily basis and death with really young men. And it's the communities within which these black men live that are suffering mostly. If you take the larger view of the city, that is allowed to come about from joblessness in those neighborhoods, drugs in those neighborhoods, because there aren't Those people don't have access to the larger community.

[52:16]

Poverty, starvation. Pardon me? Poverty, starvation. And at the same time, there's an unwillingness for the larger community who's not affected by this to not acknowledge it. Because to acknowledge it requires some sacrifice. And sacrifice. That's right. There's a karma story there. Yeah, well, the karma story is there. Chicago has a karma. I'm from L.A., major karma. But the external rewards will only come to fruition to the extent that Chicagoans, Angelinos, bring it about. And many people will live lives of gross injustice based on Chicago and L.A. 's bad karma. So it's a community matter. And so, you know, you're born in South Chicago, and you've only got one parent, if that, and that one parent's a drug addict, and you're barely fed, and they send you to school, and you've got nothing going for you.

[53:28]

What are your chances? One in a million, you're going to break through that. Your life is... flushed down the Chicago toilet, just like the LA toilet. And the karma of those of us who allow that to go on decade after decade is not good. You're not allowing it, you're a social worker. You're working on social justice issues. I'm embarrassed by the extent to which I don't, although I do, but my job is rather to teach others to be able to engage. But still, humanity has a karma overall that we will get what we deserve in some sense, except by outside asteroids and so on. But in terms of the bad, the evil in society that we have sown ourselves, come back to us now, like

[54:31]

Bernie Madoff, many of these people in North Chicago who live well and never see the poverty and rich and happy, the external rewards, they're clueless and they'll live right through it. So that's, again, an example. You can't count on karma taking care of that. The internal ones, you can count them. They live lives of cluelessness. They live lives of insensitivity. They have to be those insensitive people. They're so insensitive, they don't even know they're insensitive. And they're so out of it, they don't even know that Chicago is one community, and they don't understand that. And that's the kind of existence they have to live. It's a limited, diminished existence. Still, they're comfortable, they're fine, and it's up to us to begin to do something about that. That answer doesn't go very far when it comes to, you know, fixing things.

[55:34]

But as a way to understand it, I think karma does work very effectively. As long as you, you know, take these other considerations like community into consideration. Yes. I have a question about, I guess, the way we receive karma and then the freedom point or like where we... then can exercise our choice. So I guess it's a really question about, um, like determinism versus free will. Yeah. Um, and I guess, and that's where I get a little confused with it because there's this idea that we're receiving whatever, you know, the, the fruits of whatever has been, whatever seeds have been shown in the past. Um, but then I would think that however we react, um, is then also our karma. You know, whatever comes to us to respond to it is also determined based on karma. And so that's taught. I mean, that idea doesn't really fit with what's typically taught, which is that we have the freedom to change, or karma, we have the freedom to change.

[56:44]

So, yeah, can you write inside of that? Let me work on that for a second. Yeah, you can conceive of karma... deterministically and said that whatever you're doing now is totally done patterned into you by the place. And if we take the youth, you know, the 10-year-old with really no parents in South Chicago, the freedom that that child has is so minuscule. The chances of that child making it in this world are so tiny. You don't want to say no chance because there are always cases where somebody somehow lives through that and ends up being a brilliant social activist in the future. But, you know, tiny freedom. My guess is everybody in this room, you know, if this kid in South Chicago, if his parents had done for him what yours did for you and what mine did for me, is freedom would be hugely enhanced. He would have the capacity to make choices.

[57:46]

So karma can be thought deterministically, and I think for some human beings, the degree of freedom is tiny. So freedom, in principle, is a birthright. But to the extent that you're enlarged, by your practices, by your upbringing, by what's done to you by your community and family and your schools. You break into the realm of freedom in your post-teen years, and you begin to make real choices. Yes, I have this pattern of doing this and this and this. Yes, I do smoke. And yes, I do. I am selfish about this. Yes, I do this and I do that. But you don't... think of yourself as unable to break those patterns, right? That you have been gifted by your background of dependent arising to get to the point where, yeah, you can make some changes. And if you begin to make changes, then you can make bigger ones and then bigger ones and bigger ones.

[58:50]

And if you understand deeply dependent arising and the whole notion of karma as cause and effect that you're doing, then you're growing your capacity to make choices. And, you know, so that's a lifelong task. And if, in Zen, Satori is a freedom, it opens your vision, right? You understand in a much more comprehensive way through your practice, and you're able to make choices that most people would ever dream of making. You can conceive of possibilities that just aren't there for others, and you have a built-in discipline that once you see a good possibility, you can act it out, you can enact it, you can do it. So, you know, think of somebody like Gandhi, not even a Buddhist, just enormous, developed, cultivated freedom. There's a story about Gandhi lying there on the operating table, and he says, no anesthetic, right?

[59:52]

Just, you know, cut me open and do your work. I don't have time to be knocked out. I've got work to do. There are stories about people who built powers of will and freedom, and they're enlarged by it. So both things are going on. It's just that think of your freedom, the freedom that you really do have, has arisen dependent on certain circumstances, what your parents did for you, what your... culture did for you, what your history did for you. All of these things through evolutionary biology made it possible for you to be here. Nobody like you has ever existed and you're making choices that were inconceivable to women 50 years ago, 100, 1000 years ago. So not just the external freedom but the internal freedom of vision that you have is something wholly new that has been created through dependent arising and

[60:53]

Dependent, arising, and karma are really the same ideas. It's just that tables are in karma. They arise depending. Only free beings have karma. Only choosing, choice, dependent beings are karmic. So karma is just a human thing, even though it's really the same concept, dependent, arising, and karma. So it's really, I think, important to use karma to expand your freedom. but also to understand the ways that you have been determined to be who you are. Through your upbringing, I look back and I see things my parents did for me, mostly really good. I was just determined by them, genetically, environmentally. My neighborhoods were okay. We weren't rich or anything, but mostly the kids weren't beating me up every day, and I wasn't beating them up. All of that, I became who I became. on those factors. Those are all gifts that I didn't determine, but there I am.

[61:55]

So based on that coming together of things, I get to be somebody who has more freedom in all senses of the word freedom, internal and external, than most people in my city of Los Angeles. So, try it again if that's not persuasive, but I think it's really important to just for motivational sake, to not take karma as a full determination. It's a partial determination, but it's partially your determination. You are exactly who you are based, to some extent, on your own choices. But now you've got more to make. Within a certain range, you're free to make things. I want to preface this question with, this is coming from like, an analytical standpoint, you know, rather than that of a practitioner, because I have no idea of really understanding the concept of sameness right now. But when we chant, you know, there is no causation, there's no cessation, there is no tomorrow, there is no today, there is no yesterday, you know, like, when we look at Prajnaparamita, there's no way of like, being able to kind of draw the dualities that it seems a lot of karma exists on, you know, a good and an evil way then and now, you know,

[63:12]

How can those karmic mechanics work within Zen? Because even in writings like Kaplow talks about it's a fortunate karmic circumstance that you were able to be here and receive this Zen training. If we still carry the past with us in our current identities as practitioners, how do we look beyond that? Is that the practice is to... break away from karma? And are people who have achieved satori now, are they outside of the karmic realm in the Zen tradition? Great question. Glad you raised it. Really important because you do chant that. I chant that. Okay. So, it has to do with the magnificent quality of Buddhist enlightenment, satori. as an opening that is not just a little everyday kind of opening, but a huge opening where you see something really large, really large, beyond the human altogether.

[64:25]

And the Mahayana Buddha Sutras describe that, and the Zen texts talk about that, and it's literally beyond good and evil. It's just transcendent. Good and evil, again, is a human construction. It's a good construction. It's the best one we've come up with. But it's ours, and there are ways to transcend this. But in the Zen tradition, Dogen, founder of Soto Zen, lineage, master of this very place, when he realized that there were Zen monks in his time, who were talking about being beyond good and evil, and that that legitimated their doing whatever they fucking feel like doing. And, you know, they were going around talking that way, and Dogen was just adamant, adamant, absolutely adamant, that Tori is beyond good and evil, and you are completely in the world of good and evil, and your acts are deeply evil, and sometimes they're good.

[65:31]

And if you don't... live up to that, you have failed altogether. So, karma is absolutely real. You will never completely be out of the realm of good and evil. But, what happens in satori? You're open, right? You're open. You don't have to think about the rules. Should I do this? You know, your compassion is... And what you do is a natural... act of good, right? So you are beyond good and evil. You don't have to look at the rules. What are the rules, say, that monks should do in this circumstance? You know exactly what you should do. And in that sense, you're beyond the deny it. You're beyond the code. But, you know, no... respectable Zen monk or nun would claim that for him or herself like beyond good and evil or if they do you know immediately they are not and they're not to be trusted and you know get them out of here or get them into therapy or something so there is a huge picture of reality that is encountered and I'm not talking from experience here but anyway there is a huge picture of things that is

[66:48]

transcendent, that you get glimpses of and it transforms the way you operate in the world. But in the world, karma is always fully in effect. So whatever you do has the same outcome, whether you're enlightened or not, that will happen. The implication of an earlier question was... makes me think of this. What happens when you do a good thing for selfish reasons, right? Is that a terrible thing? And the answer needs to be, we're done here. I'm sorry. Do you mean to just... You could finish the sentence. Okay. Okay. So I apologize. I know someone... The rest of you want to ask questions. Doing good things for selfish reasons is good for most of us.

[67:53]

And you grow up doing that, right? When mommy tells you not to pull your sister's hair, you do it not because you're compassionate towards your sister at that age. You do it because mommy tells you. and you want to be in mommy's good graces and you don't want to spank or whatever. But still, it's a good thing to do. And doing good things, even for selfish motives, builds a pattern of behavior. And hopefully at some point you internalize that feeling and doing the good things. They're now done not for selfish reasons, but you actually care about your sister. So in Confucianism, there's a brilliant element. This is really good. So Confucius says, don't count on anybody ever to be grateful unless they're programmed, they're raised to be grateful. So think back, if you have younger brothers and sisters,

[68:55]

You can remember your parents say, okay, John, you must say thank you. But John's riveted on the gift, like, thank you, like, whatever, go away. And finally, John can't open the gift until he says thank you. I'm grudging him. He says, okay, thank you. Into the gift. Okay, so being programmed, every time he gets a gift, he has to say thank you. Every time he gets anything, he has to say thank you. It doesn't feel gratitude, but through the process, excuse me, I'm spitting. Through the process of saying thank you over and over and over, tens of thousands of times, you develop gratitude. You come to understand what gratitude is. And that's why you do it in Zen ritual. You bow, and you express your gratitude to your heritage, and you are building the capacity for this rich, rich feeling of gratitude. And in Satori... That's one place where you're completely beyond everything. You feel grateful for the gift of life, complete gift.

[69:57]

You didn't decide to be here. Here you are. And the gratitude just flows through you like tears at the highest level. But all that begins with behavioral programming that mom did and that your teacher now does. and that your chants do to you and the vows you take do to you. Anyway, I'm really grateful to all of you. Just this verily short visit here, and I'm leaving, and to be in a community of this level of human character is a rare opportunity, so I'm really grateful. Thank you so much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[71:02]

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