We had a constant flow of people who were pretty out there. Yeah. And I had to often spend time with them. And I kind of enjoyed it actually. Because I would always just let myself go to wherever they were. And I sometimes found new crazy places I hadn't imagined. And I would start thinking, and I would agree with them, and I'd think just as crazily as they did, you know. And they felt, oh, he's one of us. But at the same time, I stayed calm. I didn't get distracted.

[01:08]

I just felt really at ease. And they usually came into a kind of ease. And if I felt depleted, as I said, I sometimes pulled that depletion back into myself. I let it go out, but I also pulled it back into myself. Or I'd let myself get disturbed, but then by the time it ended, I'd try to bring myself back till I felt as good at the end as I felt at the beginning. And in any case, they felt good usually just meeting somebody who accepted where they were at. And it often established sufficient trust

[02:09]

That I could get them to decide not to burn the building down or not to stab somebody or something. Or trust enough that I could get them to agree to go to the psychiatric hospital for observation. And the local hospitals actually got to know me quite well. And they liked it actually. Because they were so tired of having all these crazies come. And the family wanted nothing to do with them. And they had no place to return them to. And they felt they could return them to the Zen Center.

[03:23]

So they felt better when we brought somebody and somebody just showed up in the street because at least someone cared, somebody was interested. Okay, yes. How exactly do you do that when you kind of take this energy back again? And what is the sign that you notice that this is actually enough of depletion? Is that a bodily feeling or...? How bodily or energetically is that your experience?

[04:23]

Everything is a bodily feeling. And sometimes it's quite subtle. Well, I guess I do it just like I illustrated. I'm very simple in this. If I want, I ask myself to do something. You ask yourself to do something? Yeah. In other words, I ask myself that this happen. Or I might visualize myself pulling it back in. But this is also based on the experience of really getting to know a lot about leaking. And from the point of view of studying personal karma formation, there's two main things to notice. How moral acts wholesome acts or unwholesome acts or breaking the precepts affects your state of mind and particularly affects concentrated states of mind.

[05:56]

But before you can really notice that, you begin to notice the process that certain things make you leak. And I developed little tricks to notice when I was leaking. One, I could just feel it. And another is, I may have told you this before, but it's kind of gross to tell you. I noticed that occasionally I bit my tongue. And I noticed that when I occasionally bit my tongue, I bit it when I had a thought I didn't like. So then I made a vow. Every time I say something,

[07:10]

that I feel uncomfortable with, that doesn't fully respect another person, I will bite my tongue. My tongue was pretty bloody. Once I made that vow, it's very funny, it's very strange, I think. that I can command my tongue and teeth to do something. Because, you know, sometimes I have a cough dropper or some kind of lozenge when I'm driving. Because somehow when I drive, my mouth gets very dry. And I don't like to chew them up. I like to keep them as long as possible. And at certain points it gets so small that my teeth start chewing it up.

[08:29]

It requires quite a lot of attention. Okay, now teeth, you're not going to do that, you know. I'm driving. because at a certain point my mouth just decides enough of this sucking this darn thing swallow it so I don't know if any of you have this dumb experience but it's quite interesting to observe that your body has a mind of its own. I think there's even now they've discovered kind of sort of brain centers that are in other locations in the body. Anyway, your body has a mind of its own. Yet I can command the body to do something like bite your tongue every time you say something you're uncomfortable with.

[09:43]

And once I made that decision, I bit my tongue a lot. Sometimes, sometimes five or ten times a day. That's not so much. I thought you were just a medium. And the inside of my cheeks. Oh. And the taste of blood, sometimes I really... After two or three years of that and considerable improvement, I decided to stop this practice of observing when I leak.

[10:49]

And once I released the vow, it almost never happens. But it was interesting, at that stage, my tongue was faster than my mind. Or my teeth were faster than my mind. So, finding ways to notice that you leak. And I think one of the clearest times one notices leaking, that you begin to experience it palpably, is after a

[11:52]

Sashin. When you come out and you, I mean, everything's too much, you know, in the first few sashins. Yeah, I mean, by the way, there's a sign-up sheet for Sashin right over there. I'm just kidding. We're, um, 12.30 is lunch? Yes. Okay. Okay. So I'm on the way up there unless there's something else. In the early days there were three different meanings of karma. It's not so important to know, but one was, it meant actions or activity.

[13:16]

And another was, it meant ritual, and it came to mean the the office work in a monastery, things like that. And the third was the effect of your moral actions. emphasizing not the action, but the motivation or intention behind the action. And it's this third meaning which Buddhism developed. It was one word in Sanskrit, And when it was transliterated into Chinese and Japanese, it became two words.

[14:25]

So they separated it into different words. Okay. I think we were quite lucky to see that the four marks is so parallel to a constellation. I think it can give us a way to begin to see the function of karma in a... a profoundly impermanent world. Profoundly impermanent world. So we have the cause. Okay. And then we have its accumulation. And then you have the result.

[15:39]

So there's a cause, there's some cause, something happens. And the accumulator. And then there's the result. What do you mean with accumulation? Does that mean once is none and more often that is accumulation of the cause? The cause stays with you. I mean, what happened? stays in your body and mind. Yes. Or it has duration. Okay, so we can use various words here. Duration. And the more the more it accumulates.

[16:48]

But the point here is that what happens during this time? The cause can mature. So in some time, in some people, event A happens, let's call it, or something like that. A happens and it just fades away. But in other people A happens and pretty soon you get the whole alphabet here. So then there's a study of why does it accumulate in some kinds of characters and personalities differently than in others. So you can't look at karma as conditional. So it's conditioned all along the way.

[17:50]

You can't say now in one of the early theories in Buddhism, I mean in India and partly in Buddhism, cause A resulted in punishment B. But there's no such, in the Buddhist way of looking at it, as it's developed, there's no such correlation between this cause has this result. And then there's manifest activity and unmanifest activity. Okay. All right, so... Okay, and When there's a manifest result, that manifest result is reified or it may be dissolved.

[19:44]

So, So practice is involved in this territory, in this territory, and this territory. You're teaching learning theory. I am? This I don't know, but I hope so. So Zen practice, given that, and given an understanding of this, the pedagogy of Zen is to function in this territory and to function in that territory.

[20:50]

In other words, how can you practice so you change the accumulation? How can you practice so the result is dissolved? And how do you have a state of mind or behavior that there's less causes of karma? And the practice of recapitulating your personal life is one way you affect how it's accumulated in you. Okay. And then it gets into more and more detail. Like if I think Gunda.

[22:03]

I just think it, but I don't say your name. There's less karma associated with that. But if I actually verbalize your name with a certain feeling on it, there's more karma. So there's distinctions made between thinking something and the various degrees to which you actualize it in the world, in your body, and so forth. You think about it or actualize it in the world. Or actualize it in your body, saying the words. That's all obvious to people.

[23:03]

But you can... So you don't really need to know all the Abhidharma theories about this. You can just notice it in your own behavior. But the understanding of unmanifest activity is the result often appears only under certain conditions. So that there may be karma that's unmanifest in you. You're completely unaware of it. But in certain situations, this karma will come out. Like in your village. and what happened in the war.

[24:19]

Before the war, you could say these people were all pretty nice people. But in certain kinds of situations, some people betrayed each other and some people helped each other. She never would have known that without the extraordinary circumstances. So in zazen practice you sometimes try to work with unmanifest activity by imagining how much could I hate if I hated. So you try to exaggerate small possibilities that you know human beings have. Yes?

[25:31]

Didn't you say karma requires intention? Yes. I mean, this reduces the possibility for karma to arise if you don't have intention. I don't know. Yes, that's something we have to discuss. In general, Buddhism emphasises that karma accumulates through a conscious intention. So, I mean, karma is good practitioner. What do you mean? I mean, karma is something which the practitioner has, but not somebody who doesn't practise or just... No, I mean... Do it, please. Yes. . This is the precept. It's not for people who don't consider the consequences. Yeah, I'd have to think about this. Yes?

[26:34]

I haven't forgotten what you said. Yes. No, because that's what I'm just now thinking of working on it. There is one advice not to go in very turbulent circumstances when you want to keep your laws, you see? Is the reason for this advice, because I thought this advice of no, is one reason not to go in such circumstances that this unmanifest activity really gets in action because you said it's a difference if I have a drama in my head or I speak it or I do it in that hierarchy. Is this the background? Yeah, something like that, yeah. Es gibt eine Empfehlung, sich in gewissen Situationen nicht zu betreten, wo schlimme Dinge passieren können, wo man selbst beteiligt ist.

[28:01]

And I am personally very concerned with this advice, because I am personally very interested in this topic. And I asked if the background is because of this hierarchy, that it makes a difference whether I have very problematic thoughts, whether I speak them or whether I do them. Because of this unmanifested activity, which is being updated in a context that is actually very interesting. For example, in the civil war in Kosovo, when they surrender, the temptation is great to be included in one of the two parties. And then, yes, war ability. If I hold back and stay in a quiet place, then this activity really manifests itself. I made the example when I was in the Kosovo. And when I'm there, the possibility to be involved in any activity that is connected with violence or something like this is more likely than when I stay just in a peaceful, safe place.

[29:14]

Which for me, and that's what I'm interested in, that means engaging in any turbulent places. Then you have to decide to always search a very calm place or just go. Yeah, but that's why there's a distinction between the Buddha and the Bodhisattva. In a way, you can, through practice, get yourself in a very good place where nothing bothers you. And if I look at the teachings of some of the people in my lineage, the state of mind that they describe as the ideal state of mind and that all human beings should have, is simply only possible in a monastery.

[30:19]

You have to be the abbot and people are bringing you food and you can sit there blissed out. I've been tempted by this possibility. So the bodhisattva, though, is the one who enters into the weeds, enters into the difficulty. But then you have to decide what level of difficulty can you manage. Some people can be bodhisattvas, but they can't be married. Being married is just too difficult for most Bodhisattvas.

[31:24]

They can help lepers, they can help crazies, but not their spouse. And I know people who have found themselves in extremely difficult situations. And at significant moments, thoroughly betrayed by others. And then, in the case I'm thinking of, lied about in public so that The wrong side was believed. And this person simply said, if I let this disturb me, my practice is not worth anything. So at 10 o'clock at night or something like that, he was on a boat.

[32:32]

He crossed his legs and he simply said, I won't move until I feel I'm no longer disturbed. And he sat without moving till seven or so in the morning. And he finally felt, okay, now I can face this without attacking anybody, without being angry, etc. So if you're going to go in difficult situations, some kind of fierceness like this may be necessary. So it's interesting when you come upon a situation where you've practiced well enough that basically nothing bothers you, really.

[34:04]

You can engage in things without being disturbed. And then something comes along of such a scale, like war or something equivalent to that, that you find your personality and so forth in shards shards are broken pieces of pottery then your practice may keep you together but you've got to keep together long enough to put the shards back together And people who practice often find that the few I know have been in such situations, that deep down underneath they always feel sort of good. And they can use that feeling to put their life back together.

[35:20]

What, Christina, is an example of karma that you think is not intentional? Like killing this person with a gun? You weren't here yesterday when we talked about it. Well, it's the same. Which was the question? Karma that is not conditional. Which is not intentional. If I hurt Angela, for instance, and I don't know about it, and I don't know about it, then it's not my karma. If I hurt Angela, and I don't know about it, then it's not my karma.

[36:46]

The way Angela relates to me is my karma, though. So if I notice that Angela is relating to me in a certain way, my noticing it makes it my karma. So you could say one of these wine sacks doesn't notice that he's hurting anybody as he stumbles down the street. is not accumulating karma stumbling down the street. Just because he bumped into someone. But he's got enough bad karma already, obviously. So... So the person who is more sensitive, if we accept this theory, accumulates more karma.

[38:15]

And by accumulating more karma, you then can work with yourself and refine yourself. Because you can't develop your practice unless you accumulate karma. For they say, if you can't experience shame, you can't practice Buddhism. So now that's the theory. We're testing it out here. So it feels like, Christina, you don't like the feeling that one can do things and not have responsibility for it. You know, it's just difficult to accept that karma is only... there, if you have the intention.

[39:27]

And I mean, when you say, say, karma comes in, if Angela reacts back, then this is a contradiction for me. I mean, karma is there if it didn't end it, because Angela just said that to me. Yeah, but if it doesn't come back, if I never see Angela again... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's some other way to arrive at karma. Deutsch, bitte. Yes, I think so. Deutsch, bitte. Okay. Okay. Okay. I hope this isn't too personal a conversation.

[40:29]

All right. Okay. So... If Angela is hurt by me and then mad at me because of that. Yeah. And I think she's crazy. I wasn't responsible for her. Then I get no karma. Yeah. So... Yeah, I know, it's like Reagan was called the... Yeah, Reagan was called the Teflon, you know, president, right?

[41:36]

Yeah, we don't want to be a Teflon Buddha. Okay, but if I also... Let me finish this. If I also feel, okay, I don't think she's right, that I didn't mean to hurt her. But Angela is not separate from me. If somehow she's upset, I'm also somehow responsible. Then, by that attitude, I accept the karma. But that's a pretty sophisticated way to look at it. So from that point of view, if you have a client who's got a lot of karma, It might be because they're deluded. It might also be because they're so sensitive and perhaps unable to deal with their own sensitivity.

[42:40]

There's a word in Japanese, aware, spelled just like the word aware. Which means knowing that you are always causing suffering, whether you like it or not. Wissend, dass man immer Leiden produziert, ob man das weiß oder nicht. So that would be, knowing that would be a kind of karma. You'd feel a relationship to the world that you could call karmic. Okay, I haven't talked, you know... I dealt with karma in my own practice. And I've related to karma in terms of the people I practice with. In the first years of my practice, I just assumed really that you could only accept suffering.

[43:57]

that you could only accept suffering you couldn't end suffering and that was good enough for me so I practiced for years with that view and it was only after quite a few years that I began to realize you could virtually free yourself from karma So this koan I want to present to you is about just what I'm talking about. Okay, now the importance to giving boundaries to the idea of karma If it has boundaries, then it has specific cures. If somebody comes to you with a disease, And you're a medical doctor.

[45:24]

If you can't define the disease, you can't give the medicine. You can try to cure the whole body and let the body cure the disease. But that's still a matter of definition. what would be good to come to. And I think in different, I mean, there's room for Ayurvedic medicine, homeopathic medicine, traditional Western medicine, Qigong, etc. And they all look at health a little differently. but they also have to look at health within their own system. And it's probably a mistake, a certain arrogance to imagine secretly their system explains all the others.

[46:29]

Okay. So if we can come to a definition of karma here as a Buddhist, Maybe you come to a slightly different sense of how karma operates in systemic therapy. And another definition or sense of karma in another kind of therapy. And I think in therapy you may have a somewhat different... Because you have to relate to the effects of karma differently, you may come to a different understanding of karma. It's not a fixed thing.

[47:32]

Everything in Buddhism's view of the world is functioning. It's a function. It's an activity. And you might call karma like water. But if it's in this stream bed, it's different than if it's in this stream. So we have to look at what stream beds it's running in. So it's quite interesting. If something happens to one person, It can be devastating. You feel horribly guilty way beyond the cause. Somebody else? So that's all in this middle period. What's going on that makes it accumulate in a different way?

[48:32]

For instance, if you're... So what I'm saying here is that I haven't tried to work out the philosophy of karma in general in a context like this before. This is how I'm experimenting with you. Okay, so let's take the case of this first case in the Film somebody gave me. Do I owe money to somebody for those films? English language films? No. Because we watched them at her house. We started the first one.

[49:33]

Is this young man, this not so young man, had these thoughts of suicide? Which I had to go in and out during the film because of something that was happening. But if I remember correctly, the grandfather was a murderer. Yeah, and the daughter of the grandfather, or the daughter of that man, took on the man's guilt. And then her son felt he should kill himself to expiate the grandfather and the victim.

[50:34]

Now, I think from the point of... Did she translate it right, both? Yes. Okay. I think from the point of view of Buddhist practice, the way we look at that, Is that this person, what was his name, Paul or something like that? I don't know. We can call him Paul. Okay, Paul. is that he took on from his mother a view.

[51:39]

I'd really have to think about this more, but I'd say it's a view and not karma. He took on a view from his mother in relationship to her father that required him to act in a certain way. And if you could get him to change this view, you could get him to be free of the idea. That's different than the karma that the mother has from relating to her murdering father over years.

[52:42]

And dealing with the mother's karma is different than dealing with the son's view. So there's different views or different therapies for dealing with different practices or different therapies for dealing with views than there are for dealing with karma. No, that's how I would tend to look at it. But if I was a therapist, I'd really have to refine this and say, it's a mixture of karma and view, it's mostly view, which is the best approach? Yeah, yeah. Is it an inherited view, unconsciously inherited view, or is it consciously created karma?

[53:53]

We could refine this more, but that's the territory I would work with. So the definition of karma is related to the practices which work with it. Okay, is that enough on that for now? Yes, Christine. Yes, yes. I like too much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you notice what? Yeah. Yeah, there's less karma involved. Hello.

[55:16]

How can I resolve this karma? And one possibility is that if it came to me, if I have a thought and I notice that's a thought I don't like about the other person, so I just let it go by without grasping the thought. Is that good or is that dissolving? Dissolving. It's good and it's partially dissolving. And it's not reifying the karma. You know, if you get... And how do I completely dissolve it? Don't be greedy. Okay. I remember reading Dostoevsky years ago. And somewhere in there, the thought of killing the father is almost like killing the father.

[56:21]

That's true, it's hard to be a child. Because there's various thoughts always about, my mother... Also, da gibt es wirklich genügend Gedanken, was man mit seiner Mutter anstellen könnte. My little grandson says to his mother sometimes, I think I'm going to kill you or something. Ja, also mein Enkelsohn sagt zu seiner Mutter, wirklich, eines Tages bringe ich dich um. And it would make it even harder to practice meditation. Und das würde es noch viel schwieriger machen, Meditation zu praktizieren. Because the third or fourth day in... Weil am dritten oder vierten Tag in... you sometimes are in a pretty bad state. And the guy next to you who just farted and also hasn't washed his feet. Okay. It's more the doer who doesn't ring the bell.

[57:34]

Oh yeah, and then the doer who doesn't ring the bell on time. So I'll put the first part of this koan. And I'll tell you the story at the end. We have five minutes? I'll just tell you what he said.

[59:10]

If even so much as the letter A is kept in mind, you go to hell faster than an arrow shot. This is running out, so I'll switch colors. It means that even if so much as the letter A is kept in the mind, übrig bleibt oder gehalten wird, gehst du in die Hölle schneller als ein Pfeil geschossen werden kann. Even so much, when even a drop of wild fox slopper is swallowed, slopper is drool.

[60:52]

You will not be able to get rid of it for 30 years. Even if you have swallowed a drop of a wild fox's spit, you will not be free of it in the next 30 years. Goans love this colourful language. But you do tend to remember these phrases. Wild fox slobber. [...] I have two more sentences to write. I'll put it back. Thank you.

[62:29]

Thank you. It's not that the way in India was so strict.

[63:33]

It's just that a wine bag's karma is so heavy. Can't think of the last three. Can't think of the last seven. I'll write it after lunch. Okay, so now I'll tell you a story and we can go to lunch. The story is such a clear story that you can remember it. I don't have to write it down because it's kind of hard to remember. Okay.

[64:34]

Hakuin, Yakujo or Baijiang, Baijiang is a Chinese name. During his lectures, he noticed that there was an old man who often was at the back of the lectures. And he... When the lecture was over, he disappeared with the crowd. And one day, after the lecture, the man remained in the back, standing. And then Baizhang said, who are you? Who is it that's standing there? He said, I lived on this mountain in the time of the ancient Buddha Kashyapa.

[66:01]

It is said that there were six Buddhas before Buddha. And the last one before the historical Buddha Shakyamuni was Kashyapa. So he said, I lived on this mountain in the time of the ancient Buddha Kashyapa. And someone asked me if a fully realized person is free from cause and effect. And I said, yes, a fully realized person is free from cause and effect. And when I said that, I was immediately reborn as a fox.

[67:08]

And for 500 lifetimes, foxes must have a short lifetime. Ten-year lifetimes is 5,000 years then. How long does a fox live? Six years? Anyway, for 500 lifetimes I've been a fox. And And because of this statement, I've lived 500 lifetimes as a fox. And he said, could you please turn, give me a word that will say something that will free me from being a fox.

[68:17]

And then he said, could you please say something that will free me from being a fox. And Bai Zhang said, the law of cause and effect is obvious. And this old man was enlightened. And afterwards, Bai Zhang told the assembly this story. He said we should give this fox a funeral for a monk. And they went out and found in the cave at the upside of the mountain And they cremated it and had a funeral ceremony. So that's the story. And that's one of the most famous koans.

[69:20]

And it's got a lot of... provoking things in it. But one of the most interesting things is the emphasis that by a single statement you could have 500 years as a fox, 500 lifetimes as a fox. And a single word from Bai Jiang can change that. Now that's a tremendous... Power is put in how you say something.

[70:31]

It makes the beginning student very nervous. What if I say this wrong? What's going to happen to me? There isn't the point in the story. Sometimes Bai Jiang's response is almost or exactly as what he said at the time of Kashyap. So I think in the earliest versions of the story, the law of cause and effect is obvious. What later versions of story made Bai Zhang's response more and more similar to what he said that gave him 500 lifetimes as a fox. So that one thing the story impresses on you is how, if this is about karma, is that very small differences create karma.

[71:43]

If you have so much as a single, as the letter A In your mind, you go to hell. Letter A, by the way, is the shortest version of the Prajnaparamita Sutras. The Heart Sutra is the famous short version. But the shortest version is just, ah. So if you even have that, if you keep that in mind, you're in a karmic bad time. let alone when you're drinking wild fox water. So here for our dialogical practice of therapy,

[73:08]

Exactly what you say to the client or the client says to you can be extremely important. Big karma turns on such things. And the other thing is that enlightenment itself can turn on a single phrase. That's very different than the whole idea of preparatory practices and so forth in Buddhism. So there's a lot of teaching in this story. At least the Zen view of karma. And the Zen view of how you become free of karma. And that's the end of the story for this morning. And he wrote... And he wrote, The moon reflected in so many drops of water, shaken off a crane's beak.

[74:47]

Yeah, a poem like that is not a description of the world. It's a kind of action. It's very different from the substantialist notion of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. When you ask yourself such a question, what is the world? If you were asking. And then you answer yourself. The moon reflected in so many drops of water, shaken off a crane's bill.

[76:54]

Saying that takes the weight of the question and it kind of disappears inside you. If you read Chinese poems much, they're all meant to be imagined through embodiment. For example, I've used, mentioned recently a number of times, the line from a love poem. That's... used in koans, it's referred to in koans now and then. She says she's not in love.

[78:03]

But the bracelet on her wrist is three sizes too big. Yeah, so when you, a line like that in a Chinese poem, You're really supposed to feel how difficult it is for her to keep the bracelet on, because if she lowers her arm, it would fall off. At the same time, how she's sort of trying to hide the bracelet. Mm-hmm. and the sense of being bound to the man, and yet free from the culture around her where she's not supposed to be in love with this man.

[79:10]

So she says she's not in love. But the bracelet on her wrist is three sizes too big. And it's also used as a metaphor for practicing. Das wird auch verwendet als eine Metapher für das Praktizieren. Er behauptet, er sei an spirituellen Dingen nicht interessiert. Aber warum verschwindet er jeden Morgen um halb fünf? Irgend so etwas. Something anyone wants to bring up? I have been thinking about Christine's question and your answer about karma.

[80:13]

The way you answered The more you carefully look, the more compassionate you develop, the more karma you develop. So you have to really consider well of how much you can handle or you deserve or whatever. On the other hand, you've got this wine bag sack, yes. What's his price to pay for being less sensitive?

[81:15]

We pay the price of his getting away with murder. In the way I'm speaking about karma, it's not a justice system, it's a wisdom system. It doesn't meet out, M-E-T-E. Meet out means to give out. Can you say the context? It's not a way of meeting out rewards and punishment. So everyone gets the results of their action. It's about the wise understanding the results of their action. A lot of the Abhidharma is about how the fruits of action mature differently and how the fruits are qualitatively different from the causes.

[82:29]

I have a friend who had two aunts who survived, I think it was Dachau. He lost other family members. But these two aunts survived. And of course, they were victims of a system at that time which they weren't. entirely for sure responsible for. But while in the camp they had their own karma. Maybe they had slight betrayals of other people so they survived and things. According to my friend, one of them got through because she was Teflon coated.

[83:54]

She just shut down and went through. The other one experienced everything and discovered how to handle it. The one who didn't shut down had a lot of karma. Okay. Which one would you want to be a Buddha? The one who didn't shut down. She's the one who came through that experience and has the possibility to practice. So the first noble truth is to be open to the suffering around you.

[84:57]

And it's one of the reasons we take the precepts. You take the precepts so you'll know when you're creating karma or when you're making suffering. Does that make sense? I mean, my deciding, vowing to bite my tongue was a form of taking the precepts. I decided to use some way to notice when I was saying something harmful. And in the tradition of Buddhism the precepts are considered a kind of physical power. that somehow taking the precepts creates a kind of physical power to acknowledge and deal with and restrain from karma.

[86:21]

Restrain from. And deal with. So again, imagine if I was a therapist. I might introduce the possibility of vowing at times. Again, maybe it's something you all do, but I can just say imagining it myself. If I saw somebody where we both agreed that they had a habit that was causing them problems, I might at the time when there was enough mutual trust to suggest they took a vow for a specific length of time.

[87:49]

I'd make it a specific length of time. And I would make them feel that it's not a right and wrong thing. If you break a vow, it's okay in Buddhism. It's a kind of guide. And I might transpose it from their actual situation. For example, say they couldn't get out of always criticizing everything. No matter what came up, they found what was wrong with it. At the time, it seemed like the right moment. I would say, why don't we consider your taking a vow to not criticize any movies for three months?

[88:57]

If someone calls you up and says, did you see that movie? You can't say, oh, that was lousy. You have to say, yes, I saw it. And you can't say any more about it. So they just see it for three months. They can actually refrain from criticizing something. So I would anyway kind of introduce the power of vowing in such ways. And also what we discover is views are also implicit views we have from our past are often vows. You vow at some young age that I'm a certain kind of person.

[90:16]

So practice is also to get you to notice the vows you made in the past. Which might have been a way to get yourself free from your family. but are dysfunctional in your present family. So in Buddhism, you work with vows in all the ways I'm talking about. Now whether this can be transposed to the therapeutic situation, I don't know. But since we're talking about how to deal with karma in a larger sense, in relationship to Buddhism, maybe it would. Yes. What's slowly dawns upon me?

[91:25]

Yes. What's slowly dawns upon me? Yes. What's slowly dawns upon me? For me karma always had this kind of side tone, yes, overtone of guilt. Now it goes towards that direction of responsibility and your personal merit. For what you're doing constructively and deconstructively. Yes, I think so. One of the things that seems to be the case if you practise, Right now I couldn't provide an analysis of why it's that way.

[92:55]

But maybe you've done something. And you've caused a lot of problems. If you decide not to do that thing again, you've been quite ashamed of it. But you decide not to do it again. When you completely decide not to do it again and you know you won't you walk away from all the karma. It doesn't stick to you like guilt. So as soon as you decide not to do it maybe you've stolen all your life. And you think, I'm a shitty person, I'm a thief. Shoplifting.

[93:55]

Stealing from the restaurant where I work. And then you decide, I will not do this again. The effects of having done it in the past are gone. Yeah, we could talk about that more, but that's generally true. Yes?

[94:24]

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