Sony Karma accumulator here. Okay, is that genetically you fertilize an egg? Genetically, an egg is fertilized. And then at some point, while it's still an embryo, before it's a fetus, another consciousness comes in and turns it into a person. And that's the general idea within Buddhism of those Buddhists who believe in rebirth or reincarnation. And that the dead person's, whatever it is, waits around up to 49 days Looking for a good womb with an already fertilized embryo.

[01:17]

This is pretty hard to imagine how this works. But it's hard to imagine how The constellation works. It's hard to imagine how God works. So anyway, this is the theory. And then if the... There's no soul in Buddhism, so this thing that's waiting... Doesn't find a good place, a good home in 49 days. Goes through a little death and another rebirth and it gets another 49 days. So Zen has mostly dropped this whole thing. And you find very little reference in Zen to reincarnation or rebirth.

[02:33]

Zen doesn't say it's not true. It just says, if it is or isn't true, I'm just going to lead my life. So the idea of transmigration was definitely dropped by Buddhism. That there's an entity that is carried on to the next life. But one's predispositions, sankhara I think is the word, are carried forward. You're just... But that's also the sense of what's carried forward in your own life.

[03:42]

So karma is conditional and conditioned. It arises from a cause. And it arises from a cause which is conditioned. So karma is conditional. It's not fixed. It's conditional at the moment of creation. And it's conditional in the way it manifests in you. Otherwise you'd be in a deterministic world. And karma in Buddhism is mostly created by your motivation.

[04:58]

Something that happened to you involuntarily has an effect but doesn't create karma. It's your conscious participation in it that creates the kinds of patterns we call karma. Yeah. So if you have inherited a... some genetic defect from your parents, strictly speaking, it's not correct to call that karma. Unless you want to think that the genetic defect is related to some conscious act in the past of someone. So this means that at each moment your karma is manifest in condition by that moment.

[06:00]

Yes, I have a question. When you say that karma is created through motivation, If you shoot somebody on intention, is it something else than doing it just by accident? Yes. I mean, if you accidentally shot someone. So say you're in the woods. All right, I know of an instance where two kids had a gun. At Aspen Institute. in Aspen, Colorado and they shot a gun up into the air they found their father's gun they were up on a mountaintop somewhere and they just shot this gun up in the air and it went into the music tent in the Aspen Institute

[07:40]

And two elderly ladies listening to music were killed. This happened a few years ago. There was a lot of karma for these kids. But because of other people's reaction, not theirs. Yeah, they'd just gone into some farm or something, not the Aspen Institute. If the bullets had gone in and killed some farm lady. And then the kids had just hiked off and never heard that anybody died. In the karmic theory, there's no karma for those boys who shot the gun. There has to be a conscious, intentional involvement. Yeah. That's more or less the same idea of guilt in the Christian moral.

[09:06]

You'd have to explain. Because in the Christian moral, you also have to have an intention to make a bad, demeaning opinion. To really be guilty of it. And not when it just happens because... Yeah. Deutsch, bitte. But of course, say that these two boys, thank you, their parents thought Their parents, of course, went home and told the boys and the police were involved and everything else. So they accumulated a lot of karma that way. And I'm sure they feel terrible about killing these two ladies. But even if the parents had decided it's too traumatizing to tell the kids, And so didn't tell them.

[10:31]

The kids would still bear the karma of it because they would pick it up from the actions of the parents. And that would be a harder karma to expiate through practice. to undo. And we'd have to send them to Bert Hellinger. He would find out. Or any one of you. So if... But some people will say for example if there's a car accident or something like that or a stone falls on you off the cliff it was somehow your karma.

[11:34]

But that's a misuse of the idea of karma. That's just an accident. And so karma, the theory of karma allows a lot of room for accidents. Not everything can be. The deer dislodged a little stone which fell down, and this deer had once been your grandfather. I mean, everybody knows that. So in general, people would say that the idea of rebirth and so forth has been added to karma later in history. Karma comes first. The idea of karma comes first. But I think we can concentrate on the idea of karma and leave aside rebirth or reincarnation.

[12:45]

Couldn't we say that karma in that sense is similar to the principle of responsibility? You certainly are responsible for your actions, yes. But it's not only responsibility. These actions shape the kind of mind, the kind of being you are. But they still are conditional, so you can do something about it. So we have various ideas in Buddhism about how karma accumulates, how the effects of our actions accumulate.

[13:54]

How they affect us. How they can be expiated or atoned for. atoned for. When you do something to make up for something else that's happened. Or how they can be transformed. Or how they can be, you can free yourself from. There's good and bad karma. And there's All karma binds you, including good karma. But some effects are better than others. Okay. So I'll try to go over this again a little more succinctly tomorrow. And because a fundamental idea here is that we have no inherent nature.

[15:10]

The world And we and each moment is a construct. And we're constructing it. And if it's a construct, we can deconstruct it. So karma is a way of looking at yourself as a construct. And then to look at, oh, if we're a construct, then I can suspend construction. Or I can change the construction. Or I can stop constructing altogether.

[16:12]

Okay, so that's the idea of dying. Und das ist die Vorstellung des Sterbens. That you're stopping constructing. Dass du aufhörst mit dem Konstruieren. So the idea of dying in Buddhism is to have a conscious death in which you voluntarily die. Also, da gibt es eben die Vorstellung, dass du... Let me go again. The idea in Buddhism is to have a voluntary death in which you consciously... einen freiwilligen Tod, Entschuldigung... a conscious death in which you voluntarily die or voluntarily participate in your own death. Now, probably this takes some psychological work because most of us resist dying.

[17:16]

Yes. There's an Australian English speaking therapist, systemic therapist who defends therapy as deconstruction. It's a very deep article about therapy as deconstruction. It must be in English? Yes. Okay, being an Australian. In Australia. He's in Australia. Do you have a copy of the article? I have only a German copy, but I can give you the source. Mm-hmm. So I would say the process, what I meant by the psychological work in relationship to dying, in practice I would say it's something like this.

[18:25]

First you accept intellectually that you're going to die. I think this is a big recognition for little children. There's a slow recognition that life isn't permanent. And so at some point you really accept you're going to die. And then at some point you actually become willing to die. Yeah, you're willing to die. But you gladly remain in this world. And then I think once you're more willing to die... I mean, there may be times when you're unwilling to die because you've got a lot of work to do. Or you have a child to bring up.

[19:42]

You're not really willing to die yet. But underneath that, there's still the kind of beings we are, we're willing to die. That's, in the end, what accepting change is all about. And that willing to die shifts into being ready to die at any time. If we had to die at this moment, okay. The time has come. Do you think this is a natural process or this is what you developed during very conscious preparing for dying?

[20:50]

I think it's a natural part of practice. and I think it's a natural part of it should be a natural part and probably is a natural part of life unless you have too many ideas about unrealistic ideas yeah I mean most of us know that everyone's going to die but we always think it's going to happen to someone else But we always believe that it will happen to someone else. Yes. I have a question. How does Buddhism explain, for example, my six-year-old child? My daughter has just developed what she says. She is afraid that I will die. How would Buddhism explain something like that to a child?

[22:00]

For example, a child is six years old and she now realizes that everything isn't permanent and she has a lot of fear that her mother will die. They have to get used to it. Yeah, that's all. You can't soften the blow too much for the idea. Yeah, I mean, you just... The more I think it's okay with the parents, it'll be okay with the child. But I remember a funny story I read. Two little boys or little girls, I don't remember, with cancer. Their parents came in October with Christmas presents. And the kids, and the parents went through this number about... Santa Claus was real busy this year, so he came early.

[23:15]

He started in October. So the kids went, I don't know, they were six or so. They went completely along with it. Oh, Santa, yes, Santa's so busy. I'm so glad he brought me the presents. And they had microphones, these sociologists, you know. They had microphones in the bed of the kids. So the parents left. And the kids said, oh, let's open our presents, and so-and-so died down there, and, you know, I don't think you'll be here by Christmastime, and they're completely frankly talking about it. And I remember when Trudy died, the woman who edited with me the Zen Mind Beginner's Mind.

[24:17]

She died at 29 of cancer. And she completely knew she was going to die. And she didn't need to pretend about it. But in other states of mind, she needed to pretend about it. So in some states of mind, she'd talk about when she was going to be well, when she could take care of her kids. And what we would do, she was a close friend of mine, what we would do next year and stuff. And I discovered I had to go along with it when she did that. If I said to her, but you're not going to be here next year, she wouldn't have liked that.

[25:22]

But then there are other times where suddenly she would shift and she would talk about, would you please take care of this and we do that. So this idea that you participate in your death is not that you hurry the process. You wait till you're nearly dying. You wait till you're nearly dying. Yeah. Yeah? I mean, we could both start now, but you've got responsibilities and I'm still young. Yeah. Red Skelton, who's an American comedian.

[26:34]

When he was very old, he said there were the three ages of man. Youth. Middle age. And you're looking good. So when people come up to me and say, oh, Roshi, you're looking good, I think... LAUGHTER Okay. So let's sit for a few minutes and tomorrow we'll dissolve the constituents. If it gets cold, you can close them.

[27:58]

Thank you for all being here again this morning. It's like an American gymnasium in here. Now I'm wondering how to make the pot fit the lid or the lid fit the pot.

[29:04]

I think we did pretty well speaking about the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. But speaking about karma, I couldn't find the context to speak with you about it. And maybe I should just avoid the word. Because it floats around attracting meanings. And I need a context for it.

[30:05]

It's hard to have a context for it because all of you know quite a bit about karma in various ways. She doesn't. I mean the word karma floated toward Jung and he turned it into archetypal this and that. In the study of poetry that's called misprision. When the misunderstanding of something is created. Because Freud's archetypes are certainly a creative idea. Jung's archetypes are certainly a creative idea. Freud's too. But I think he misunderstood karma. And it's become a... Who didn't misunderstand karma.

[31:43]

Well, we're going to try not to. And the only way I can sort of locate karma as a useful term is in how we practice with it. So, and I felt a little badly about speaking about karma so loosely that I kind of made fun of the idea. That might be fun, but it's still not my deeper intention. But the thing is a word like that gets a certain power. And then it's used in a variety of contexts in Asia to give credibility to some practices.

[32:47]

when the practices have their own credibility without being called karma. So if we go back to my list of suffering fields, Christine wants to say something. Oh, please. Why would I resist? It helped me or even motivated me to talk about karma because I asked myself how we can bring this into our work and I thought That we sometimes do this and I ask myself, how can we do that even more creatively?

[34:20]

To talk about the consequences of something, to talk to the client about it. So if you have certain attitudes or you tell each other some certain stories about yourself or about others, to be really precise and to really examine what consequences it has. So from that respect it was really good yesterday. Well, I don't think it was all bad. It's just I didn't feel I was able to make clear what I feel. Yes. I have understood you yesterday that how you use the term karma fits very good in the Zen Buddhism who make the focus of the now and... The present, yeah.

[35:36]

Of the present and look to the consequences. I have the teaching of my Tibetan background and I think it's also right... I can say it, that you also say, so when I sit here, it has consequences for the future, but I have also a background who leads me to sit here. It's another view of... Another view. And I was a little bit disturbed yesterday when I thought you think only this part of karma, from the present to the future, fits for Buddhism in the whole. And I think there are also teachings from Buddha itself, who said when you want to know what will happen with your life, look at your living now, and when you want to know what happened in the past, you also look

[36:41]

in the present now and i think both uh directions um are the make the whole buddhism and then you have one um one few which yeah i think which sits for you I cannot say what is right or not, but I think the teachers where I have the teachings, I think in the past should be enlightened people who have the few. I have the impression that what Roshi said yesterday about karma has irritated me a bit. I had the impression that it fits very well in the Zen context, where the focus is on the present and then it is looked at what kind of effects, how I live now or what I do now, this karma concept. I come from the Tibetan tradition of teachings, where the other side is also seen, where there is also a teaching from the Buddha.

[37:58]

If you want to know what your future looks like, then look at your life now. And if you want to know what your past looks like, then look at your life now. So it goes in both directions. And I thought that Buddhism encompasses the whole and focuses on different traditions, on different aspects that also fit into philosophy and meditation. Thank you. And thank you for your English. Everything you said, although everything you said, I agree with as the way Zen also understands karma.

[39:02]

Yeah, so what you said, I agree with. But I think that there is a difference between the way Zen Buddhism views karma and Tibetan Buddhism views karma. And particularly since the first Karmapa when the whole tulku system was developed. Now, I think, and this is part of what I want to talk about, I suppose, I think that, well, first of all, I can only speak about karma in, first of all, the context of my own experience. And then to enlarge that context to the context of those I practice with, including my teachers.

[40:12]

And then in this context right now. Okay. Okay, so that expanded context from my own experience, which includes being here at this moment. But I also think we can look at Buddhism as a system in itself. and decide that within the system of Buddhism, to the extent that it has integrity, Karma means such and such.

[41:14]

Then we can say, ah, Zen is misinterpreted in this way. Or enlarge the understanding in a particular way. And Tibetan Buddhism has enlarged it and misinterpreted it in particular ways. So I don't think there's any one truth. I don't think there's any one Buddha. I care what the Buddha says, but not as much often as I care what you say. And I... And I would say, at least as far as I have known from my own experience and know from the teachers I've known, that there's many different kinds of enlightenment.

[42:29]

And And most people who are enlightened are enlightened only within their own culture. And few are enlightened outside their culture. I'm just telling you my opinion. And there's all kinds of different kinds of enlightenment. There are some people who are mentally extremely enlightened, but assholes in a lot of other ways. I could give you some examples, but I prefer not to.

[43:31]

I mean people who have enlightened other people and are fantastic but I know enough about their life and all kinds of deceptions There's something else going on there too. So I don't... So I'm just saying, I'm not saying good or bad, I'm just saying it's a complex picture. And I would say the enlightenment of Buddha is not equal to the whole of Buddhism.

[44:40]

We can't look back to enlightened beings for what Buddhism is. Again, that's just my opinion. but when you do look back to the Buddha as the enlightened being and all of Buddhism emanates from him and is somehow included in his teaching then you have the idea the powerful idea that there is a universal language it's a universal reality and you end up with a anyway and we know practically speaking there's no universal language right now some of the things I say she can't quite find a way to say them

[45:46]

And all the things I say, I can't quite find a way to say them. I have a kind of feeling space. And there's no words connected to it. And I sort of throw words at it. And if they stick, I say them. If they fall off, I try to find another one that sticks. I don't have any sensation that the one that sticks is the truth. It just happens to stick for long enough for me to say it. Yes, Christa? About the term intention connected to karma.

[47:03]

Because I have the idea that our So I'm not always focused on what I'm doing, what effect it has. I also look at what the environment has an effect on me and then how I act on this environment. The bigger part I think it's outside of my consciousness, so I don't have the feeling that I'm really able to really do something much about it. That's why my question is?

[48:19]

How and what? How can I do it or just avoid not to do it? What is it? How can I do it? How can I do what? All my deeds, actions, all my acting, doing, all that what comes from the environment towards me, That it doesn't affect in me that I... So that I don't... So that I don't support this karma which comes from the environment towards me, that I don't support it or reinforce it.

[49:32]

That's important in this therapy. In what sense do I kind of enlarge this thing or in what way do I kind of go out of it? Yeah, okay. It helps me a lot to have a discussion. Yes, of course, everything you say is true. Not just because you said it, but because it sounds like it happens at this point to be true. Well, perhaps it's always true. Anyway, I agree with everything you said, except I wouldn't call everything you said karma. If you call everything you said karma, Then it becomes a word like the world.

[50:43]

And you can't practice with the world. You have to break the world down into parts to practice with it. So that's my first response here. For instance, I don't think there's any collective karma. This is one of the ways Jung understood karma, I believe. So when you're looking at what we call collective karma, we're looking at views you've inherited from your culture. There are practices for views and there's practices for karma. If you combine them, there's no practices for either. That makes sense, at least.

[51:58]

So if you generalize it as karma, which you could say all these things that accumulate in us are karma, but it takes the word then out of a functioning practice. Yes. I just want to follow this thought in my... When we're discussing how can I change or can I influence my karma, especially that one where I say, okay, that's not nurturing, that's a bad karma for me. Then for me, there is the question, where do I decide which part of what I think will foster the negative karma?

[53:00]

Can I change just now? And even before, I feel that I get, when I thought it over this night, I get in trouble even to decide what is the negative karma for me and what is the positive one, because I'm very careful for this very easy, very quick, this is bad, this is good, this is bad, this is good, because that's a mechanism that also has some possibilities in my life. So on the other hand, not to decide is also normal. no way to do it. So you have to have any antenna to say, okay, this part of my views, this part of my behavior, this part of conduct, my speech, really reinforces negative karma in my life and maybe creates suffering for others.

[54:09]

So, stay the eye on the common ground of very contemporary of political correctness or something, that stuff. Because many people who turn down the wheel also intentionally not that what was common that is good or bad. What has been bothering me since yesterday is I have to find that sensory that tells me what is nourishing or not. I have to change that. How do I get out of this trap? How do I get out of this trap? In this time, God, good or bad, how do I get out of this trap?

[55:11]

How do I get out of this trap? Yes, I understand. How you make a choice. How we find ourselves at the middle of, at the center of causation. If we can even approach an answer to that, we've done a great deal these few days.

[56:13]

So let me leave it at that for now. Yes, either one of you. I want to go to another point of yesterday evening. Yes. Where you said... Karma is a way that we construct the world in ourselves. Karma is part of that. And you also said that Buddhism sees reality as a construct.

[57:37]

So for me, the question is, with these experiences, like, for instance, from the Constellation work, you see certain, let's say, that we're subject to certain constructions. I can't just say I'm constructing this for myself. And then when I can't recognize it, when I don't have... I don't know that somebody killed himself two generations ago. And don't find any reason I'm linked to his hate, you know. So it's just like dicing around, you know. I have no possibility, no tool of deconstructing anything like that.

[58:47]

Deconstructing what happens to you during a constellation. No, like for instance, like his great grandfather killed himself and that's why he is suicidal and he has no kind of connection. It's not his choice or it's not even his construct. He can deconstruct. It's not something he's constructed. This is a client or you or? No, no, this is an experience. That's just an experience. In fact, what you can see, example from this constellation and stuff, phenomena, what you can do is revealed in constellations. that the grandson is carrying the suicide of the grandfather.

[59:52]

It's not even necessary that he knows that this person ever existed, but still it's linked. Yeah, okay, I understand. Does this fit together with this hypothesis? A hypothesis. A hypothesis, but that's okay. Everything fits together. So that I construct reality myself and that I can deconstruct it. It's not that simple. Okay, but what you said is part of our present soup. Okay, so... She also wants to add to this soup.

[61:03]

Since yesterday I have been told to talk more about the context of accepting and the good and bad karma, because I, the therapeutic, I have to decide. decide if I take a client or not and if I think he is very beautiful and I think it's very difficult to decide and to talk to the person about it and in the last weeks I had to work with a person who came with a voice of a man three years ago So he changed his name into a woman, and now he wants to have an operation to become bodily a woman. And I noticed that this is a subject which on one hand touches me, and I can accept that, but I noticed the more I talked with my colleagues, So exactly, if I accept, then I also have to accept what is there and not to accept what he's moving towards kind of changing it all.

[62:24]

And then I was kind of... I was really in a kind of... And I couldn't decide to write a kind of report about this person to support this operation. But I wanted to do therapy with this person. Well, I mean, this is exactly what it is. a situation and I'm not looking what can I accept and I'm here at the point where I just don't quite know. And yesterday we talked about Islam and this touched me a lot. And that's one of the reasons why I took this patient maybe. And at what point is it good to end acceptance? You might be interested that some of you know Otmar Engel? practices with the Dharma Sangha and he's come to many Sashins.

[63:47]

Anyway, he's not quite as many as Eric Eno, but he's come to... But he's now been asked to be head of the Heart Treat Zendo, which Issan founded. What's the name of that guy who is the actor in Titanic? Yeah. At Hartford he was just there for a couple of months. And they have other people applying for the job. And... He was the first to be looked at.

[64:54]

But they asked me to send somebody. And I named Atmar. His Buddhist name is partly related to Ihsan's name. So he now divides his time six months or seven months at Crestone and four or five months in Berlin. And he's not sure he can give up Berlin. But the board of the Hartree Street Zendo met. And they said, unless this other guy who wants the job is more beautiful than Leonardo DiCaprio, we want you. And they said, unless this other guy who wants the job is more beautiful than Leonardo DiCaprio, we want you. But I think Atmar is already more beautiful.

[65:57]

These are the criteria. These are the criteria? Yeah, that's one of the criteria. It's all about the right operation. No, no he's not. He didn't need an operation. He's quite happy the way he is. And he conveys that in his lectures. Okay, something else before I stand up. What is that? I'm also thinking about the karma, in the collection of collective karma, because that's something more personal, the karma.

[67:11]

I think about my birthplace, where through war, Like a lot of, I don't know, when you lie about other people and some go to the other party and they kind of... What's verraten in English? Betrayal. And they betray the others and... People have been killed because of this betrayal. As they're in concentration camps or they also in wars. Have you done actually anything to them? Those have been killed. There's still this kind of like a, you know, cheese-lit thing of silence and people really cannot talk to each other and there's mistrust.

[68:25]

And I also grew up in this place, and you could always feel it. And I ask myself, is this the sort of karma which you carried with your sisters, which you experienced, or what do you call a thing like that? These are not only obvious. These are really results from acting of some people, you know. Well, of course, what you describe is real.

[69:34]

But whether we call it karma or not, or we should call it something else, let's decide that. See if we can decide that. So I want to say a couple of things before we break. Related to what we're talking about, but to change the context slightly. That's clarity. Now what I'm trying to do here is, this is effectiveness.

[71:54]

Clarity. Composure. Composure is what? Composure is when. How do you feel? Okay, the difference between posture and position. Zazen is not a position. Position is something you take from outside. The position of a Buddha. That doesn't make any sense. The posture of a Buddha is something you discover from inside. That you are constantly arriving at and departing from. position is fixed.

[72:58]

A posture is something I'm always coming to standing. I'm not standing. I'm coming to standing. A composure is somewhat related to that idea. It's a person who's composed, it's a person who in every situation finds his own integration. If a person has composure, in most situations they... are one with the situation or at ease in the situation. We do, but I looked it up once. We have a word, but it's... Different feeling. Anyway.

[74:21]

Now, what I'm trying to make a difference to you, what we could call factors and power. The sevens can't really... Factors and powers is the headline? Yeah. Okay. Now it's funny. In one of the teachings, the 37 Wings of Enlightenment, what a bird they are. It's such a deucey. Boeing 707, 747 of enlightenment. Okay. In the 37 wings of enlightenment, there's five factors and then there's five powers.

[75:23]

And it's the same list repeated twice. So, So what I'm trying to list here is what I happen to think of. Some of the ways, the most important ways I can think of at least. which in my own practice and observing others, I see suffering changed, reduced, transformed. Now each of these could be understood as having a goal of reducing suffering. That's not their only goal, but that's one of their goals.

[76:35]

Okay, so when you practice the recapitulation of your personal life, you may have... I'm just, you know... I'm just trying to find a way to say something. Okay. It may have, there may be a number of reasons you do it. But say the reason, because it may just happen spontaneously in Zazen. But when you create it as an intentional context, No, I'm creating a technical term here, an intentional context.

[77:44]

When it becomes an intentional context, the goal is understanding your life and freeing yourself from your personal story. It then has an additional actuality of being of power. In this case, the power of having power. Okay, so when you practice the eightfold path, If you practice the Eightfold Path and work with your views, The power that results from that, among others, is deep relaxation.

[78:45]

Okay, when there's a deep relaxation, that's something different from freedom from religious abuse. It's like a tree. The purpose of a tree might be to produce a fruit. But then the fruit becomes a power. There's a lot more apple trees than, I mean, kumquat trees, because people like apples in the West better than kumquats. In other words, the apple begins to have a power on its own independent of the tree. Am I making sense here? Okay, so when you begin to practice the replacement of causes, you begin to have a feeling of space and clarity.

[80:07]

And that space and clarity has a power far beyond the replacement of causes. Here the byproduct is maybe more important than the product. That's one reason you can't compare these things. They all share the same goal. But each is a different context. And a different power is realized through that context. And the realization of that power is as important as the original context. And then the power creates a new context.

[81:10]

Okay. So that's just a kind of something to try to give you a feeling into the world view, as I understand it, of Buddhism. Which it seems to me the basic world view goes back to the songs of the Rig Veda. And then they get institutionalized in various ways. For example, and this is an exact example, but it's something. In Hinduism, rebirth was a way to... Climb the cast ladder.

[82:24]

Rebirth was understood within the context of Indian society as a way to be born in a higher caste. So then karma began to be understood as how you accumulated the kinds of things that gave you rebirth for the higher caste. So the fundamental idea of karma and rebirth becomes more in the service of the culture than any other meaning. When karma and rebirth came into Buddhism, it was to be free of any idea of caste.

[83:27]

And eventually to realize birthlessness, to realize no rebirth. So Buddhism immediately changed the context and understanding of karma and rebirth. And they had a real struggle because there's no entity that's passed. So they have images like the candle passing the flame, etc. But if you go back to the Rig Veda, to the little that I can understand these things, You have this worldview in a very pure form before it gets institutionalized and in the service of a particular culture.

[84:34]

Okay, so then you have the question, how do you keep a wisdom teaching wise? How do you keep it so it continues to function as wisdom? So that's one of the questions I'm trying to face or talk about. Now the context in which we have to understand karma in general in Buddhism is it has to relate to cause and it has to be able to be dissolved. In a Buddhist context, karma that can't be dissolved It shouldn't be called karma.

[85:43]

So this original laying out of the teaching controls the understanding of Buddhist karma. It doesn't control the idea of Hindu karma. It can also be very creative misunderstandings. Harold Bloom, who's a the outstanding literary critic in English these days. And I don't think his theory in its entirety is true. But his main theory is that the creativity of each poet is the misreading of his predecessor. The one before him.

[86:58]

Foreganger, yeah. So he misunderstands his predecessors. Like the poet Gary Schneider now. Both got into Buddhism through Ezra Pond. And both of us probably misread Ezra Pound. And we probably both misread it in different ways. Okay, I think that's a good time to stop. Yeah, there's some fellow named Sati.

[88:29]

Supposedly said to the Buddha. It is this consciousness which will be reborn. He could have said, is this the consciousness? But he said, it is this consciousness which will be reborn. And the Buddha supposedly said to him, would you please explain to me what you mean by consciousness? And as Sati was about to answer, Buddha said, is it this consciousness? So before he answered, when he was about to answer, And the commentator says, Sati was nearly lost.

[89:51]

I like nearly. Not entirely, nearly lost. It's maybe good to be nearly lost. And if we try to use the... the glisten of the constellation... What's glisten? Glisten is the way something shines off water or... Again, perhaps we have a feeling when we're with someone... when we're about to discover the constellation. We could say, as I said yesterday, Sukhirishi would say, the potentiality of mind.

[90:54]

To discover? Just the potentiality. The potentiality. Okay, so Dogen says things like time passes from today to tomorrow. Also Dogen sagt solche Dinge wie die Zeit schreitet fort von heute zu morgen. Time passes from today to yesterday. And time passes from tomorrow to today. And from yesterday to today. And from tomorrow to tomorrow. So what is he trying to say? What he's trying to emphasize here is the passage of time is time.

[92:15]

And the passage of time is not passing away. It's not going by. And the passing of time is not stationary. You would say something like, the passage of time is presencing itself at every moment. Now we're trying to get to something here. He's coming pretty close to expressing something that's ineffable. Expressing something that, locating something that's ineffable.

[93:32]

So the passage of time is not passing by. The passage of time is not stationary. The passage of time is exerting itself just now. Do you get the feeling somehow? Sukhriya, she used to say, everything is going along in a very strict way. He meant for example that your lungs and breathing and hormones and so forth are all working in a very precise way.

[94:43]

And there's a lot of redundancy, so there's room for self-correcting. Redundancy? Redundancy, two or three things that do the same thing. Also, that there is a very big simultaneous...

[95:21]

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