Dependent Origination & Practice

Retreat Day 5: Impersonal natural laws set the parameters within which we live. When we see these laws clearly, we see the impersonal nature of all phenomena. But many of these laws are so subtle and complex that it’s difficult to understand them. When we don’t understand, we take things personally and suffer. To help us understand how life works, the Buddha drew a map called "the laws of dependent origination." This talk explores how this map works in the nitty-gritty of life and in meditation.

Transcript

So,

I wanted to start tonight with reading some of the ways,

A typical way that dependent origination shows up in the suttas.

This is from a discourse called Many Kinds of Elements,

Mishima Nagaya,

Middle-Length Discourses.

You know the different sets of discourses?

There's the Digha Nagaya,

Which is the long discourses.

A lot of information takes a long time to get through.

There are lots of suttas that are much shorter,

But not as meaty.

And then there's Mishima Nagaya,

Which is,

These are the Goldilocks suttas.

They're not too long,

They're not too short.

And so they're long enough that they have some meaty stuff in them,

But they're not so long that it takes you three weeks to read them.

So the verse 11 of Many Kinds of Elements.

Venerable sir,

In what ways can a monk be called skilled independent origination?

Four?

Is someone ringing the bell,

Or is this all me?

I'd rather made it,

Yeah.

So do you have 26 reasons?

Yes,

Yes,

We give you all 26.

So this is Ananda,

Again,

Venerable sir,

In what ways can a monk be called skilled,

Independent origination?

Here Ananda,

This is Buddha speaking,

Here Ananda,

A monk knows this.

When this exists,

That comes to be.

With the arising of this,

That arises.

When this does not exist,

That does not come to be.

Where the cessation of this,

That ceases.

I guess there's only two.

So that's actually the formula for dependent origination.

It's both,

It's not just,

So everything has a cause,

So there's a cause that gives rise to this.

It's also independent origination.

It's not something that,

I mean,

Throw a match and it sets a whole field on fire,

It takes off on its own.

Independent origination,

It's a cause that if that is removed,

Then the thing that it triggered stops.

And then the Buddha goes on to give some examples.

That is,

With ignorance as condition,

Formations come to be.

With formations as condition,

Consciousness comes to be.

With consciousness as,

You know,

As we got.

A couple of you want to help pass these out.

These are your cheat sheets.

You can fold them up and stick them under the sleeve of your shirt.

So you can look at the pretty drawings or you can listen to me or you can use these for doodling.

So with ignorance as condition,

Would you like one too?

You look like a child who forgot his lunchbox.

With ignorance as condition,

Formations come to be.

With formations as condition,

Consciousness comes to be.

With consciousness as condition,

Mentality,

Materiality comes to be.

With mentality,

Materiality as condition,

The sixfold sense bases come to be.

The sixfold bases come to be.

With the sixfold base as condition,

Contact comes to be.

With contact as condition,

Feelings come to be.

With feelings as condition,

Anybody know what's next?

Craving comes to be.

With craving as condition,

Clinging comes to be.

With clinging as condition,

Habitual tendencies come to be.

With habitual tendencies as condition,

Birth of action comes to be.

With birth of action as condition,

Aging,

Death,

Sorrow,

Lamentations,

Pain,

Grief,

Death,

And despair come to be.

Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering.

And this way,

Ananda,

A monk can be called skilled and dependent origination.

So this is one of the ways dependent origination is presented.

And you'll find this list of stuff throughout the text.

Sometimes it's presented in reverse order,

Which is the second statement about cessation.

In Mijima Nagaya 38,

For example,

He goes,

With the cessation of birth of action comes the cessation of aging and death and the whole mass of suffering.

With the cessation of habitual tendencies comes the cessation of birth of action.

With the cessation of clinging comes the cessation of craving.

With the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling tone.

With the cessation of the sixth-fold base comes the cessation of contact.

With the cessation of mentality and materiality comes the cessation of the sixth-fold base.

With the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of mentality and materiality.

With the cessation of formation comes this cessation of consciousness.

The cessation of ignorance comes the cessation of formations.

Okay,

Did you all have that down?

Is that perfectly clear?

Okay,

So these lines,

Again,

Are highly stylized,

But they really have the core of what the Buddha taught.

So,

What I'd like to do tonight is unpack this a little bit,

Or at least get started on unpacking it.

The first thing I want to do is step back from this whole list.

This is how it's presented in the suttas.

I want to step back from the whole list and talk a little bit about the importance of dependent origination and really what it's all about.

And then I'll give you an example that just comes out of everyday life.

And then we will come back to this classical description and see if we can map this example from everyday life onto the classical description of back and forth.

And then,

If we don't run out of time,

I have a blog that I wrote.

It was describing something that happened to me last time I was here at the Easter retreat,

The Bhante Vimalaramsa,

Which I wasn't talking about dependent origination.

I was talking about some other things,

But once you understand it,

You can see how it's woven through that.

It pulls all the parts of this together.

So that's what the game plan is.

So first of all,

The importance of dependent origination.

So imagine this.

I have this rock,

And I throw it straight up in the air,

And it comes down on my head.

Whack!

It leaves this sore swelling on the side of my skull that feels very intimate,

Like a personal message saying,

Doug,

Don't ever do anything so stupid.

Message received.

But of course,

It's not a personal message.

Gravity works the same way in Chicago and Helsinki and Antarctica and Buenos Aires as it does right here.

It follows the same principles on the moon,

On Jupiter,

Across the galaxy,

Across the universe.

Gravity is a universal law,

And to think that it is somehow concerned with my personal well-being or demise is narcissistic confusion.

But I'm not helpless.

If I understand how gravity works,

If I want to throw a rock up in the air,

I'll throw it at a 45-degree angle,

And then it doesn't land on my head,

And I'm happier.

So there are lots of natural laws,

Many,

Many natural laws that provide the parameters of our lives.

Some of them are quite simple,

Like gravity.

And when they're very simple,

We see very quickly how they operate,

And we don't take them so personally.

With gravity,

This is mostly the case.

After falling off a porch,

There are very few people who will shake their fist and say,

Gravity,

Stop picking on me.

With gravity,

We kind of get it.

But there are some natural laws that are very subtle,

Quite intricate,

Very complicated,

And they're difficult to see how they work.

And when we don't see how they work,

We tend to take them personally.

For example,

Much more common than rocks falling out of the sky on my head or thoughts falling into my mind.

The way these thoughts arrive into my mind follow very predictable,

Though subtle and complex,

But very predictable natural laws.

But if I don't understand these laws,

Then when these thoughts appear,

They seem very personal.

It's like,

You know,

Rogues that have invaded my personal space.

I began to see all this a little more clearly on a retreat a couple of years ago.

It was with Bonte Vilmaramse down outside of Joshua Tree out in the desert there.

And one afternoon,

I had this long,

Peaceful meditation.

It was wonderful.

And then I got up and I went outside to do some walking meditation.

And as soon as I did,

Thoughts began to drop into my mind.

And they were old,

Repetitive thoughts.

They weren't even creative.

I wished them away.

You ever done that?

I just wish you went.

And they just kept coming.

And then I used some of my very skillful meditation tricks to try to get rid of them.

And they kept coming.

And I thought,

Why are you picking on me?

I actually muttered that to myself.

And it was as if an answer to this,

This image arose in my head of a human brain.

100 billion neurons.

Do you know how many 100 billion is?

It's a lot.

I have no idea how many 100 billion is,

But I know it's a lot.

And some of them have thousands of connection with other neurons.

So all of us have this incredibly complex neural network that we carry around.

And I've thought about things and done things in certain ways all my life.

And as I repeat those things,

It just reinforces certain neural pathways.

Every time I repeat it,

It gets a little bit stronger.

It's how the brain stores memory.

So I go outside.

I was in this quiet room.

I go outside,

And there's sunlight and wind and road runners and a lot more stimulation.

And this stimulation just runs through my brain,

And it fires up all these neural pathways,

All these old familiar neural pathways.

Subjectively,

I experience this as thought.

So I began to chuckle to myself as I realized,

No,

Even my thoughts aren't personal.

They're just a byproduct of these reinforced neural pathways.

So if I get frustrated at this,

Then I put extra energy into this whole neural system,

And it just fires more thoughts.

And if I try hard to stop all the thoughts,

That extra effort puts more energy in the system and fires off more thoughts.

The thoughts run through the mind sort of the way waves run over a pond.

You know that old metaphor?

And so there's a temptation to jump in the pond and slap down all the waves to quiet the waves down.

And it just creates more disturbance.

But I'm not helpless.

If I understand how this works,

Then I can regard these thoughts that show up there with kindness and acceptance.

And that puts less energy into the neural system.

If I quiet down inside,

It puts less static into the neural system,

And the thoughts quiet down.

And with time,

They will even fade.

There are many,

Many other natural laws that govern the various states and qualities that arise inside us.

Many,

Many natural laws.

Ananda,

As I mentioned before,

The Buddha's first cousin and his personal attendant for the last half of his ministry.

Ananda said to the Buddha,

It's amazing,

It's astounding how deep these laws are,

How deep their appearance.

And yet to me,

They seem as clear as clear can be.

Don't say that,

Ananda,

The Buddha replied.

Don't say that.

Deep are these laws and deep their appearance.

It's because of not understanding and not penetrating this dharma that this generation is like a tangled skein,

A knotted ball of string like matted rushes and weeds,

And does not go beyond deprivation,

Woe,

And ill fortune.

So to help us unsnarl these skeins and knotted balls of string,

The Buddha drew a map of how all these laws operate.

The map is called Padakasamapada,

The laws of dependent origination.

And his map,

Padakasamapada,

Does not include all the laws of the universe.

It doesn't say anything about quasars,

About electromagnetism,

Or the second law of thermal dynamics.

The Buddha's interest and concern was actually pretty narrow and pretty focused.

He was concerned with well-being and suffering.

And so this map,

Padakasamapada,

Includes how all this operates.

Covers his entire teachings.

He said,

One who sees dependent origination sees the dharma,

Or the whole of his teachings.

One who sees the dharma sees dependent origination.

So the whole teaching is contained within this.

Four noble truths that we were talking about last night,

Each phase of dependent origination contains each of those four noble truths.

Three characteristics,

You heard of three characteristics of all things,

That everything is in flux,

Is impermanent,

That everything in the conditioned world is basically unsatisfying,

And that everything is impersonal.

We can understand that as a general principle and think about it.

But when you understand and really get dependent origination,

You see these three characteristics throughout the nitty-gritty of life.

See it everywhere.

When the suttas,

Wisdom,

Panya,

When the Buddha used the word wisdom,

What he meant was understanding dependent origination.

He said,

If you understand dependent origination,

You're wise.

If you don't,

You're not wise,

No matter how clever you are about other things.

The word avijja,

Ignorance.

When the Buddha used the word ignorance,

What he meant was taking things personally.

When you understand dependent origination,

You see how impersonal everything is.

If we're serious about inner freedom,

Then dependent origination is really,

Really crucial.

If awakening seems too remote and too esoteric and you just want a little more peace and well-being in your life,

Dependent origination is very,

Very helpful.

If we see it clearly,

Then we are less tempted to rail at gravity or the chatter in our minds.

We just see how these things work and work and play within them.

And then rather than being upset about a lump on our head or the jingle that's going through your mind,

We end up just laughing at our foolishness and stopping throwing rocks straight up in the air,

Our kvetching about a few neural synapse firing.

None of it's personal.

It never was.

And when we know it's not personal,

Then all those just cease to be a problem.

So dependent origination can help unravel all of this,

Can help unwind all of this.

But there's an important caveat that dependent origination is just a map.

It's a tool.

It's a map.

It's not the territory.

It's just a map.

I love hiking up in the high sierras,

And I always have a map with me.

In more recent years,

It's usually just a little screen on my GPS.

And you know,

When I look at that map,

And there's a dotted line for the trail,

And there are all these elevation contour lines,

And there's labels for the mountain peaks and the rivers and all that stuff.

But when I'm up in the high sierras,

There's no dotted line.

There are no contour lines.

There are no labels written across the landscape.

There is just the bugs and the moss and the scent of the pine and the clear air and the expanse of space and the sun glittering.

All those things that,

For me,

Make the high sierras so uplifting.

None of those things are on the map.

By itself,

The map is pretty dull.

It's about as interesting as a hammer.

So all this is to say that a polished,

Intellectual,

Academic,

Scholarly understanding of dependent origination is not going to do you much good in and of itself.

The map is a tool that can be used to guide us through all the ups and downs,

The territory of our life,

To see the causes of distress and to see the causes of uplifted states,

To see how all that works.

It's just a map,

But it can be used that way.

So tonight I want to look at dependent origination as a map that can help us guide through the pain,

The dissatisfaction,

The uplift,

And the joy in all the different aspects of our lives.

I think that the classical map that you have there is pretty dense,

So let me just give you a concrete example.

So there was this guy who came to me.

It was at a sangha that I teach.

He came up to me.

It was before the evening meditation had started.

He said to me,

I can't meditate because I can't control my thoughts.

None of you know anything about that.

As I looked at him,

He actually had this look of real discouragement in the corners of his eyes.

You could tell he was really in pain about this.

So I said,

Nobody can.

Trying to stop them just puts more energy into them and hypes them up.

So I said,

What happens if you just relax and just let your thoughts be?

He blushed a little bit and he said,

I have this habit of trying to control all kinds of things in my life.

So I said to him,

It's good that you know that.

There are a lot of people that try to control all kinds of things in life who don't know it.

So I said,

Why don't you try this?

When you meditate,

If thoughts come up,

Just let them be.

If the urge to control those come up,

Say just let the urge be.

Let it run.

But just observe that urge.

See if there's some tension in that.

And if there is,

Just release it,

Relax,

Smile.

I didn't give him the whole six Rs.

I mean,

Just walking in.

But you know what I'm pointing towards.

Well,

The next time I saw him,

He came up and he said,

You know,

I tried what you said.

And what happened was fear came up.

And he said,

You know,

I think the fear has always been there,

But I was always pushing it away.

And I said to him,

I said,

You know,

That's a good insight.

And so now if the fear comes back,

See what happens if you just let it be and see if there's tension in that and relax and soften that.

So it didn't really surprise me that fear came up.

In my experience,

There is usually fear underneath the urge to control.

I mean,

If there was no fear,

Why would you want to control anything?

But I was still glad that he saw it directly because if he just figured it out,

It would not have the same impact as experiencing it directly.

That's what the nature of insight is.

And in our practice,

This is an insight practice,

A lot of the insights that are most helpful,

I think I said this the other night,

A lot of the insights that are most helpful are these really simple ones about saying,

Ah,

When I let go of control,

Fear comes up.

That's really helpful to know.

So if he is able to relax the fear,

What do you think is likely to come up next?

What do you think?

Sadness.

Sadness?

Okay.

Any other thoughts?

Resentment.

Hurt.

Thoughts about why he's afraid.

Thoughts about why he's afraid,

Yeah.

Anger.

So he could feel calm.

Pardon?

He could feel calm.

He could,

Eventually.

I think when the fear subsides,

It's most often,

It's the sort of things you were saying.

I think the essence of it is probably hurt.

Calm would come later because to get to the calm,

The hurt would have to be relaxed.

There's something that's driving it.

And sometimes there could be anger,

But anger always has hurt underneath it.

So what happens if he relaxes the hurt?

And by hurt,

What I mean is suffering.

You know,

Life brings sensation,

But whether or not we actually feel hurt or pain or suffer around it depends on how we respond to it.

So what is it that turns sensation into hurt?

Our perception of it.

Pardon?

Our perception of it.

Personalizing.

Personalizing.

Not being able to forgive our own actions.

Not being able to forgive,

Yeah.

The simple essence.

So those are going to more complicated things.

If we look for something really simple that gives,

That turns sensation into hurt,

It's resistance.

It's resistance,

Right?

When you were a kid and had a loose tooth,

I don't know if you were like me,

You'd kind of wiggle it,

Right?

Maybe with your tongue,

And it creates that sharp sensation.

But for me,

There was no suffering in that because that sharp sensation meant the tooth fairy was coming and I was becoming a big boy.

But if I'd resisted it,

If I was afraid of it,

If I fought it,

It would have been hell because it's right there in my mouth.

So,

Should we take this one step further?

If he experiences the resistance and allows that to soften,

What comes up under that?

Relief.

Relief?

Equanimity.

Equanimity,

Yeah.

What comes up is just this flow of phenomena which can have relief,

Which can have all kinds of other qualities.

Okay.

So you see how this works?

So this investigation,

We look into things and recognize,

Release,

Relax.

And what we're looking for is something subtler.

We're not necessarily looking for it,

But what will tend to arise is something subtler underneath that is causing whatever the first thing was to arise.

Most states are triggered by something that is subtler than what they are.

And this is especially true of recurrent thoughts and feelings and images.

If it comes back and comes back and you do 6R and 6R,

There's probably something hidden underneath there that has actually given rise to all that that we haven't seen.

So the bad news is that whatever is triggering,

The stuff up here,

Is hard to see.

It's subtle.

The good news is that it's subtle,

So if you can see it,

If you can find it,

It's actually quite easy to relax it.

But the chore here,

The project,

Is to be able to see it.

And so this is how dependent origination works.

It's looking for something subtler underneath that gives rise to it.

And it's different than free association.

So in free association,

You go from one thought to another thought to an image to a feeling to a memory to a thought to an image.

And it's all oftentimes kind of along the same plane.

With dependent origination,

It's always looking for something subtler and something subtler and something subtler,

Something that's quieter.

Okay,

Let me pause for a moment here.

Observations,

Reflections,

Questions?

That all seem pretty clear?

Well,

You know,

It sounds really good,

But trying to do it seems impossible sometimes.

And I think while we're in our investigation to get to the next level,

Because we're in unfamiliar territory anyway,

It's easy to get tangled up and confused as to what the cause is.

Right,

Right.

And investigate is tricky in this case because particularly when you get down to very subtle ones,

You know,

Investigating implies thinking about it,

Which is actually a pretty complex mental process.

And so using something very complicated to look for something simpler.

And so,

And I'm going to talk a little bit later about how we use this in meditation.

So we'll unpack that a little bit.

But part of the gist of it is that you have to recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Smile,

And then see what arises.

If we go fishing,

Then it's that extra effort,

Puts some more strain,

And just muddies the water and complicates things.

So it takes a lot of patience and takes the willingness,

I'm going to say the willingness to not be in control,

The willingness to recognize that you are not in control,

To allow them to.

Thanks,

That's a good comment.

Other comments?

Okay.

So next what I'd like to do is take this example and see if we can use it to map onto the,

This classical map,

The one that I read to you at the beginning of dependent origination.

And in looking at this,

I'm,

You've got a copy of all of this.

And I'm just going to start from number six here,

Contact.

The phases of dependent origination that come before contact are very subtle.

And they can be experienced,

They are actually quite accessible.

But starting from contact on,

It's like all of us,

You know,

Can find those in our everyday lives.

So before we go digging for the subtleties,

I just want to start there.

I actually have a question.

Yeah.

If we're looking at something like a gross sensation,

Like a thought or a feeling,

And you've got other stuff going on,

Can it be difficult to see something subtler than the thing that we are looking for the source of?

That's right.

So is that something that we're going to sort of hear a little bit more about?

Yes,

Yes,

Yes,

Completely.

And that's why,

Okay,

Saying that when you're looking for something subtler underneath,

So you have this thought storm going on,

It's being triggered by something subtler underneath.

And the thought storm has a whole lot of energy and draws your attention.

And it's very hard to see something subtler underneath it.

You know,

If you're trying to write poetry in a class that's throwing chairs around the room,

It's really difficult.

So we have to figure out how to quiet things down so that you can see what's subtler underneath it.

So that's why the six Rs are so important,

Because the first step is to quiet it down.

And then other things,

As I'm sure all of you experience,

Other things just seem to arise on their own.

So this is not like we can go out and stick our shovel in the dirt,

You know,

And get a hold of this little beast under the ground and pull it out.

It's really more clearing it away and seeing what comes to the surface.

So starting from contact,

Contact,

Pasta,

Just means raw sensation.

So that,

You know,

For example,

You hear a distant rumbling.

And before you try to figure out whether it's traffic in the distance or peepers from the pond,

There's just the rumbling,

There's just the sound.

So it's the raw sensation before there's been any interpretation.

Or maybe you feel heat.

And before you figure out whether it's coming from the sun or a lamp or whatever it is,

There's just the raw sensation.

So that's called contact.

I don't know why they don't call it raw sensation.

They call it raw feels in some fields.

Raw what?

Raw feels in some,

Not fields,

But feels.

Feel as in feeling,

Raw feels.

Raw feels.

Yeah,

So that makes sense.

If you can hear the S rather than the ing.

So raw sensations might be pleasant or they might be unpleasant or they might be somewhere in between.

So that's,

So they give rise to a feeling tone.

Vedna.

And if the feeling tone is pleasant,

We tend to grab hold of it.

If it's unpleasant,

We tend to push it away.

And if it's kind of neutral,

We tend to ignore it.

OK,

So that's your liking,

Disliking,

And ignorance are just not paying attention to it.

And the poly term for that is tanah,

As we have talked about every night.

Tanah is really,

Really,

Really central to dependent origination of this whole project.

This will be coming up a lot.

And it's usually translated as craving.

On your list here,

I realized something that was confusing for people.

There is a,

There's a English and a poly and there's other translations.

And there's some of those other translations I don't agree with.

So if you're trying to figure out how something can be both of those things,

I may not agree with the other translations.

But when you,

If you look at some of this material or run across it in Buddhist writings,

You may find some of this other language.

So I just wanted you to have that.

So you have contact,

Raw sensation,

Gives rise to a feeling tone,

Pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral.

And if that is not relaxed,

It tends to give rise to grabbing hold,

Pushing away,

Or ignoring.

Up to this point,

There are actually no words and there's no concepts.

If the tanah is not relaxed,

The next thing that happens is the mind tends to shrink wrap around the experience.

It just sort of grabs hold of it.

And to grab hold of it,

It cloaks it,

Usually in a word or two.

And this is called clinging upadana,

Clinging.

And upadana,

Or clinging,

Is always experienced as a thought.

And it's usually the first thought.

And if that,

Of,

So you're sitting there and you have an experience of heat,

And you say,

Oh,

It's hot.

It's actually just that simple.

It's like a label that's put on it.

Stephen Levine is a meditation teacher,

Has a very,

Very poetic mind,

Just a very wonderful writer.

And he was describing once,

He was a guide in a nature preserve out in the southwest.

And he didn't understand a lot technically about the plants and the birds and stuff,

But he knew the territory very well.

So scientists would come around,

And he would be the guide who would take them around to these various places they were looking for.

And he said he was out there once with a bunch of ornithologists.

And somebody said,

Oh,

There's a Vermilion flycatcher.

And he said he could see it in his mind.

Suddenly there was this purple flash of aliveness that turned into Vermilion flycatcher.

So that's the clinging.

That's the upadana.

That's where the mind puts a label on it.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

And then the next thing that happens,

If that label,

If that thought is not relaxed,

It triggers a whole long series of thoughts,

Ideas,

Storylines.

And these are into our habitual tendencies.

And the text,

This is oftentimes called being,

Which is just really,

Really confusing.

Habitual tendencies is a translation that is really actually quite practical.

This is Bonte Vilma Ramsey's In Meditation Itself.

I think where the term being comes from is it's these thoughts and storylines and emotional patterns,

All our conditioned tendencies that we tend to identify so much as who we are.

So a sense of self oftentimes grabs hold of that.

If those emotional patterns,

Thoughts,

Feelings,

Storylines,

Are not relaxed,

It goes into an action,

Tends to give rise to an action.

So the next phase is called birth of action.

And I think the reason it's called birth of action,

It's like,

Well,

There are three kinds of actions.

There can be three kinds of actions,

Physical actions,

Verbal actions,

And mental actions.

So for example,

If you were there and I say,

Julian,

Why did you do that?

When I go in this whole thing,

It's actually the first initial action that has the most impact.

Once it's started,

The cat's out of the bag and things are off and running.

So the habitual tendencies give rise to actions that can be external,

Can be verbal,

Or just internal,

A decision to do something.

But it's the very beginning of them that's most crucial in all this.

Excuse me,

Is that sort of where fixations take place?

I mean,

At that point,

When you fix onto an idea and it becomes whatever,

Some birth of a mental action?

Yeah,

No,

I think those are earlier.

Those are probably down in your habitual tendencies.

Because the nature of those things is they sort of arise kind of out of the depths a little bit.

And to unwind those,

As we'll talk about in a moment,

You really have to go a lot deeper than habitual tendencies.

But they may show up there.

So it's deeper than just a verbal lock-in?

Yes.

And then what?

A verbal lock-in.

A verbal lock-in.

You know,

Where it's been identified as some kind of noun or verb or whatever.

And then the associations with that word then get elaborated into a story.

Yeah,

That's what habitual tendencies are.

There's a little word,

And it triggers off.

And the nature of what goes on in that has probably more to do with our conditioning than the stimulus.

We have habitual ways of thinking or feeling.

I say Dick Cheney,

And for a lot of you,

There's like a whole paragraph where I say Obamacare,

And there's many,

Many paragraphs that just triggers this whole bunch of stuff.

And those are habitual tendencies.

So that goes into birth of action,

And with birth of action,

We get suffering.

So that's just a quick description of the most,

Of the six phases that you will deal with most.

Contact,

Feeling tone,

Pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Neutral,

Tena,

Desire,

Aversion,

Confusion,

Habitual tendencies,

Birth of action,

Suffering.

Okay.

So we're all clear on that much.

Can you say something about your direct experience of the difference between feeling tone and craving?

I have a pretty good sense of the difference between contact and feeling tone,

But I think I experience craving in much the same way that I experience feeling tone.

Yeah.

So somebody,

This is an obscure example that you've never heard before,

But some.

.

.

Question.

Oh,

The question is,

Can I give an example of the difference between feeling tone and craving and tena?

Okay.

So somebody comes up from behind you and sticks a spoon of ice cream in your mouth.

And there's a taste,

And they think,

Oh,

I like that,

I want that.

So there's just the taste,

Which can be quite pleasant.

And if you relax at that point,

Things stop,

But it goes into,

Then it can go into craving and say,

I like that,

I want some more.

So that's the feeling tone,

And then the wanting more is the craving,

Is the tena.

Or that loose tooth.

Well,

The loose tooth is a tricky example because.

.

.

Well,

You can argue with me on this,

I think probably on good grounds,

But I'll just say it anyway.

Is that with a loose tooth,

There's a sharp sensation,

Which is probably unpleasant.

But you might treat it as something you like or something you don't like,

Depending on your ideas about the tooth fairy and everything else.

Okay.

Okay.

So.

.

.

What are the habitual tendencies when the breath is driven?

Habitual tendencies go into action,

Or birth of action,

And then action leads to suffering.

So when I was pulling this material together,

I kept thinking of Porgy and Bess,

And you know that there's a song in there that goes,

It ain't necessarily so.

The stories you're liable to hear in the Bible,

They ain't necessarily so.

Well,

What I would say is the stories you're used to hear in the suttas,

They ain't necessarily so.

This doesn't necessarily work this way.

For example,

It's just the example I gave.

There can be a pleasant sensation that does not necessarily lead to craving.

There can be an habitual tendency that does not necessarily lead into action.

If you just take this map quickly without looking at it too deeply,

It looks as if as soon as you have contact,

It's inevitable you're going to suffer.

And the Buddha would say,

No,

That ain't necessarily so.

But it is true that the sore lump on my head was preceded by some action.

And it is true that that action grew out of some habitual pattern in me.

So the way dependent origination really works is backwards.

So if there is suffering,

There was an action that gave rise to it.

If there was an action,

There was an habitual tendency that gave rise to it.

And if there's an habitual tendency,

There is going to be some kind of tana,

Some kind of craving that gives rise to it.

So with the Buddha,

In talking about this,

To learn the map,

It's easiest to describe going from contact to suffering.

But to use it,

To use it in the territory of our lives,

We really have to go backwards.

And that's how the Buddha discovered it when he talks about it.

He was interested in where does suffering come from?

And he said,

Well,

Suffering comes from action.

And remember,

This can be verbal,

It can be physical,

Or it can be a mental action.

Well,

Where do those actions come from?

They come from habitual tendencies.

And he started tracing this back.

So when we use this,

We need to flow downstream.

So I want to go back to the example that I started with and see if we can tease out of that these various lengths,

These various phases.

So in the example of a guy who was complaining that he couldn't meditate because he couldn't control his thoughts,

Where is the suffering in that example?

Where do you see the suffering?

That he wants to be able to control his thoughts and he's unable to do so.

So that he cannot realize his goal.

Yeah,

So you're actually tracing back.

The actual suffering,

The suffering itself.

He was meditating and he can't do it.

So that's where the reason,

So the suffering itself was just what I could see in his eyes.

And so you guys are jumping ahead.

So you're saying the suffering is really the emotion.

Yeah,

It's the emotion right there in the moment.

And so then the question becomes,

The ones you were getting at,

Was what is it that gives rise to that suffering?

So according to this map,

There's an action.

So what was the action?

Trying to meditate and feeling.

Right,

Trying to control his thoughts.

And what is the habitual tendency that gave rise to trying to control his thoughts?

Yeah,

He said it was a habit pattern.

And so what is it that gave rise to that habit pattern?

The devotion.

Yeah,

There was the desire that you're talking about to meditate.

So can you see how that works?

And can you see how magnetic it can be to sort it all out?

You can follow that.

Okay.

It seems like while we're meditating,

We're just releasing and letting go of the tension from it.

That's right.

We're not like cognitively doing that.

You're not cognitively doing that.

You're not cognitively doing that.

So let me just talk about it in meditation itself.

But just looking at the map,

So the force that drives this whole thing is actually tanah.

There is the link of tanah in the middle of this,

But there is a little bit of tension in each aspect of it.

So that's the whole thing that powers it.

And so anywhere along the line,

If you can release the tanah,

It's sort of like,

You know,

In the river metaphor that I drew out there,

It's sort of like you break down the banks and all the water just runs out and the whole river stops at that point.

But so let me describe what you're talking about,

How it shows up in meditation.

So here's your object of meditation.

So this is the metta you're sitting at,

Your spiritual friend or whatever your practice is.

And here's your awareness.

And it rests quite comfortably on your object of meditation.

And so you're sitting there meditating,

Just having a sweet and peaceful time.

And then you're thinking,

Snarky,

That's what it is.

That was snarky.

Why did he say that?

It was,

You know,

He told me if I just let go,

I'd be fine.

What's that all about?

Oh,

Wait a minute.

I was meditating.

Oops.

Okay,

So you know that place.

You're sitting and meditating and the first thing you realize is,

Well,

You're off in this whole thought storm.

And so what do you do?

You recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Smile,

And then bring your attention back to your object of meditation.

It really was snarky.

Why is it,

Oh,

I'm off again.

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

And you come back.

It really was snarky.

So it may repeat itself,

But as it repeats,

You begin to see that there's actually this word,

In this case snarky,

That gives rise to this whole train of thoughts.

And so you're sitting there and what happens is snarky comes up and you actually catch it at that point.

And you recognize,

Release,

Relax,

And come back before the whole train of thought goes on.

And then you're sitting there and snarky comes up again.

You recognize,

Release,

Relax,

And after a while,

Sometimes very quickly,

Sometimes it takes a while,

You realize that there is this deep tension.

I mean,

The word snarky has a lot of,

A big charge to it,

Right?

And so what happens is you're sitting there and you actually feel that charge.

And before it actually gets into a word,

You recognize,

Release,

Relax,

And come back to the object of meditation.

And you feel,

Ah,

Okay,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax.

And then after a while,

You begin to notice that there's just this unpleasantness.

You know,

Something feels a little,

You know,

And before it even gets into the tension,

You recognize,

Release,

Relax,

And come back.

And of course,

As you're doing this,

You find that your awareness is resting on the object of meditation for longer and longer periods of time.

And when you get pulled off,

You don't get pulled off for as long,

Right?

Until pretty soon there's just a little bit of a,

Something comes up,

A little bit of a sensation,

Recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Come back.

And the mind just sits there and then it starts to wobble.

And you recognize,

Release,

And relax.

You don't even know what's coming.

Recognize,

Release,

Relax.

And then the mind is just very quiet there and it starts to vibrate.

You recognize,

Release,

Relax,

Even before it wobbles.

And then you're just sitting there and everything disappears for a moment.

You've gone into nirvana.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sometimes the time sequence may be a little longer.

Yes?

Thank you.

That was such a good analogy.

You just inspire me to keep meditating.

Totally inspire me.

I want to go meditate.

Good,

Good,

Good.

This is a classic one that Bonte uses.

Yeah.

Well,

I first saw it from him and I thought it was wonderful too.

Yeah,

It's really helped me.

I wish we'd been seeing that maybe yesterday or maybe four.

Six are it.

Six are it.

There's a wish and if you hang on to it,

It goes in the.

.

.

That's snarky part,

Right?

Yeah.

That's snarky part.

So when that isn't coming from your own mind,

So when you're out there in the world and someone is forcing the issue,

Whatever the issue may be,

And you're.

.

.

It's not something that your mind's creating is actually.

.

.

That physical,

Mental or verbal action that's taking place is happening right in front of you and you don't have the luxury of doing anything other than relaxing.

That's all you can do at that point in time.

Mm-hmm.

There is something that I call the seven hours,

Which we'll talk about probably the last evening,

Which has to do with taking this out of the world.

But what happens at that point,

Somebody is doing something and it triggers something in you and what's happened is you're getting triggered and that's where your suffering comes from.

Somebody can come up and say,

You're a real idiot.

And I say,

Well,

Sometimes I am,

But not always.

And it just goes right on by.

Or there can be in that part of me that may have more of a habitual pattern of saying,

What are you talking about,

You idiot,

Or something that gets fighting back.

So yeah,

There's real stuff that happens in the real world and this.

.

.

And breaking it down and talk about it in a little more simple terms,

Part of the reason we meditate is actually to simplify the environment so that we can develop some skills at this to then carry back out.

Because the whole point of meditation is not to be a good meditator.

It's actually to reduce the suffering in our lives.

But it's sort of like if you want to strengthen a muscle,

Sometimes it's helpful to go to a gym and just kind of work out in a builds of strength and then you can use it to build a house in Hawaii or repair a house or whatever.

So this is a place just to practice,

To build it up so you can rely on that.

To see it in that,

If someone is trying to instigate with you,

Oftentimes you can see the penetration going on in that.

You can see,

Pardon?

The penetration going on in that,

Not just yourself,

In your own response to it.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So my mother had this phrase that I thought when I heard this from her,

I thought,

Boy,

That was wiser than I ever gave her credit for.

She used to say,

I'm not the target.

You're not the target.

So if somebody says something to you,

You can always just do an Akito move with it.

But if you step in the way and grab it and throw it back,

Then that's some of your stuff that's involved in it.

Okay,

Other comments,

Questions,

Reflections?

So according to the map,

The orthodox map,

We were to look at all the certain stages in a state of,

Call it fairly the perfect equanimity.

What wouldn't arise would be 8 through 12,

Or a craving claim,

Which would send us these further actions and look at it.

Yeah,

And you can actually,

So in ordinary life,

I think that's true.

The contact and the feeling tone tend to come up in such an automated way that,

Forget about it.

But I think there are some of you who have the experience of sitting here,

And there might be a painful sensation that comes up.

And the equanimity is really strong,

Enough so that whatever energy is coming off that sensation,

You just relax it,

And it kind of fades off into the background a little bit.

So you can actually,

It is actually possible to relax these all the way down the line,

But it is with Tanah where it,

And Tanah is triggered in us,

But it's also the place where we are able to relax it if we're aware of it.

And then as Tanah goes into clinging,

And then individual tendencies,

Like the train is out of the station and running downhill and building up momentum,

And it becomes harder and harder.

So the Buddha talked about the Tanah as the weak place in all of this,

The place we have the most opportunity to change the course of this.

And then so Nibbana,

In the state of Nibbana none of these exist.

Yeah,

Nibbana is,

I like to say Nibbana is nothing.

There is nothing.

There is nothing.

You go into nothing and then you come back out,

And usually with a huge blast of energy by the way.

But that's another story.

Oh,

That when you go in,

That Nibbana is nothing,

And when you,

You know,

You can't even say go into it,

But it's something that happens.

And then when you come back into a more normal state,

There is a huge rebound,

Which can include a huge blast of energy and a lot of relief and a lot of insight and a lot of clarity.

But Nibbana itself is nothing.

There's just nothing going on.

There's nothing going on.

So just to follow the sort of line of confused logic.

So the functionality of we humans,

The functional part is,

I might say is one through seven.

And then our personality differences or differentials that you perceive them take place is from eight on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there are a lot of people that do those mapping on top of it.

So that's a reasonable way to categorize them.

Yeah,

Functional and personal.

I wonder sometimes if people worked on themselves for a long time,

Whether they actually re-educate their feeling-tone responses to things that they've been doing.

That is possible.

It is possible.

Because even with a feeling-tone,

There can be a physiological response.

Particularly if something is unpleasant and it tightens like that,

And if somebody is perfectly relaxed,

It is not as unpleasant.

I think the king of Varanasi who underwent brain surgery without any anesthetic,

He probably worked on himself a bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So from the six-hour,

When we applied to the meditation,

And when we applied six hours,

We were told not to actually watch into the content of the thought.

If that's the case,

How can we investigate the subtle difference,

Step down or step up in each different thought?

Okay.

What I would like to do is if we could go back and delete the word investigate from our conversation this evening.

Because investigate implies actually thinking about it,

Which in those thoughts really proliferate with habitual tendencies.

So if you have a painful feeling and you want to investigate it in the sense of actually kind of think it through and figure out what's going on,

You go way downstream into your habitual tendencies where all the thoughts are.

So the way it works is there is recognized release,

Relax,

Smile and return.

And then as you're draining,

You're actually draining the tanah out of the whole system.

And as you do that,

There are things that will emerge,

The early ones that just actually show up.

It's sort of like letting the water out of a pond or something,

And there are things that were below the surface of the water.

As awareness gets clearer and clearer and clearer,

The water level goes down,

And things just come up,

And you see them.

And that's what the nature of insight is.

You just see it directly.

It's not a word.

It's not verbal.

Okay.

That means that now we are doing,

As a leader,

Doing the meta,

Okay?

We're not doing this kind of investigation,

Right?

Yeah.

I want to back away from the.

.

.

From the best people,

Maybe.

No.

No.

From the very beginning,

You are recognizing,

Releasing,

Relaxing,

Smiling.

And as you do that,

It gradually releases.

So you're out here,

You're off in a thought storm.

And as you relax all that,

What happens is your mindfulness gets stronger.

The six Rs are the most efficient way to cultivate mindfulness.

The way mindfulness comes is not by forcing yourself to look at something,

But by relaxing the tension and the strain that interfere with mindfulness.

So you're just kind of clearing the deck so that these.

.

.

So that you can see them directly,

And so they will just show up.

So you don't want to sit down and meditate and say,

Well,

This happened,

What was the cause of that?

No,

You just six R it.

And the insights arise on their own.

As the awareness gets stronger,

Those will just show up.

Okay?

So it's not really we actually put effort to investigate.

No.

No.

In fact,

It's show up or pop out on the surface.

Yes.

And putting the effort into investigation will put more stress into the system,

Which just creates more confusion.

So it's like we don't have to figure out why we're the way we are.

In meditation,

We'll release a lot of that tension,

And in our waking mind,

We just need to see what's happening.

That's right.

To make better choices,

We don't have to dig into why we're the way we are.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just shows up,

And as that shows up,

There's a lot of times I say,

Whoa,

I'm not who I thought I was.

And I think they've been transformed,

But no,

They just came out of their delusion.

We're actually hypnotized.

That's another whole thing.

We get these sort of trance states going in there that says,

This is what I am.

And hypnotic states are never 100%.

If somebody hypnotized you into saying there's two glasses of water here,

And somebody asks,

Well,

How many glasses?

They say two.

So now I want you to look.

No,

I know there are two.

No,

I want you to look very carefully.

Oh,

There's actually only one.

So it's a matter of bringing more mindfulness to the raw experience,

Because what happens is most people pay attention to the thoughts and the images in their mind more than they do what's going on.

And you can see this in yourself.

If you're walking down the hall at work and somebody is walking down towards you,

There's this whole bunch of stuff that just comes up when you see their face about,

Well,

Do I want to talk to this person or not,

And who are they?

It just comes up.

And you may not even see them.

It's just this tiny,

Tiny little flash,

And then there's this whole thought stuff that comes behind it.

Oh,

My goodness,

We're after seven.

I want to share just a few more things about this.

It's easy to confuse the map with the territory to go back to that image.

And the reality is,

And I'll just say it,

Is that once we really know the territory,

We don't need the map anymore,

Which is,

I don't know,

Maybe that sounds heretical,

Since dependent origination is so important.

But in the greater discourse on the destruction of craving,

The Buddha says,

Monks,

Purified and bright as this dependent origination is,

If you adhere to it,

Cherish it,

Treasure it,

And treat it as a possession,

You will not truly understand the Dhamma.

It is similar to a raft,

Being for the purpose of crossing over and not for the purpose of grasping.

So to really use dependent origination,

It is,

Basically,

The core of it is the six Rs,

And then to see what comes up.

Another thing is that you'll hear a lot of talks about the links of dependent origination.

There's no place in the suttas where the Buddha uses the word link or anything like it.

That was a later addition.

And the talk about links makes it sound like each phase is a bowling ball,

And they're all chained together with these links.

But dependent origination is really much more like a river that flows,

And there's a difference between the rapids and the waterfall over here.

And the classical names may be rapid and waterfall,

But they're all kinds of subtle phases in between as they blend from one to the other.

And so as this stuff shows up,

As the insights show up to you in your practice,

You will not necessarily be here and then here and then here.

You may be in a lot of in-between places.

So you don't want to push it too hard back into those.

I used the river metaphor in Buddha's map when I wrote it,

And just about the time I was going to press,

I realized all the limitations of it.

So I just want to offer another model of dependent origination,

Which is the one I pictured over here next to it,

Is the Russian dolls.

So that if suffering is on the outside,

Inside suffering is a birth of action,

Inside a birth of action,

And right on down.

So each of these events when they come along contain within them,

Contain within them all the things that led to them.

So it's not like when you go down the river,

You leave all those things behind.

They are still here in this moment.

And so that's really,

Really important because when you're in this place,

It's how as this relaxes that the earlier phases can show up because they're all contained within it.

They're just covered up by the boisterous outer layers,

But they are right there.

And the other thing that I would say about dependent origination is there is no wheel.

There is no wheel.

So one of the images you see of dependent origination is of this wheel.

But suffering does not necessarily lead into ignorance.

And there is no place in the suttas where the Buddha describes this as anything other than a linear flow.

It is very true that in a linear flow you may have a thought,

Habitual tendency comes up that feels uncomfortable for you.

So there's little backwaters and stuff that happen.

But it is not a big circle.

That is a conflation of the wheel of samsara on top of dependent origination.

But the original teaching did not have it.

Thank you.

I've heard too many Dharmatak describing it.

Yeah.

Well,

It's a classical Tibetan and people,

I was at a Dharmataka,

They were referring to it.

This is a classical image.

And there was a Tibetan thangka up there that showed the twelve links.

And I think classical Tibetan Buddhism started in the 11th century.

That was 1,

000,

1,

500 years after the Buddha.

And so we're actually,

In this process,

And what Bonte is interested in,

What I've been really sold on,

Is going back to the very earlier text.

And you find that they're just a lot more useful.

And they're a lot simpler,

Despite all the complexity there.

So if you can bear with me,

I have a little blog I want to read you.

But before I do that,

Are there any more questions or comments?

Could we even go over any other comments?

I could,

But that would take another evening.

So there is,

They're called the higher links of dependent origination,

Which is the bottom one.

And I included on it because it's actually a different animal than dependent origination.

The phases of dependent origination can arise in a flash.

There can be a momentary sensation.

It can be a split second until you've gone all the way through up to suffering.

The upper path of dependent origination actually describes how the practice unfolds.

And so it starts with suffering,

Which is where dependent origination ends.

And with suffering,

With dukkha,

When there's enough suffering,

You try to figure out something to do about that,

And you try in a practice,

And the practice starts to work,

And you say,

Ah,

It's work.

And so you begin to have faith in that practice,

Which is the second one.

And with that faith comes some relief and joy,

And the joy settles into tranquility and happiness and collectedness.

And then in that tranquil,

Collected mind,

You begin to see more clearly just how things operate,

Which in the tradition is called knowledge and vision of how things are.

And with that,

You get to disenchantment.

Disenchantment is pretty awful.

When you really start seeing how things operate,

You get to see all the delusions that you've been operating on that have so much momentum in your life,

And it can really be a wallop.

When I was practicing in Thailand,

I didn't know what I was getting into,

But that's a long story,

But basically.

.

.

Laughter Google's stupid,

Stupid logic,

You're getting in the way.

Thank you,

Thank you.

I wish I had something clever to say about this,

But I just knocked my glasses off.

Maybe that means I ought to just stop.

There's this really tremendous disenchantment about all the things we've done that don't work.

And what happened to me,

What I went into was I would sit down to meditate,

And I would start crying.

And I would cry and cry and cry until I was exhausted,

And I would fall asleep and get up.

I'd sit up and meditate,

And I'd start crying again.

And I went to this monk,

And I asked him what was going on,

And he laughed,

And he said,

Yeah,

You know,

When that happened to me,

I got out of my kuti and I just ran.

And I ran across the rice fields,

And I ran and ran until after a while I began to realize that what I was experiencing was going to follow me anywhere,

Everywhere I went.

And so I just went back to my kuti and meditated more.

Laughter And the reason this passion,

This enchantment is so important is that as you really see that,

Something begins to relax on a very deep level,

And you quit trying so hard,

And you just let it be what it is,

And that's dispassion.

And from that there's the liberation,

And the final thing is the knowledge of the destruction of the taints.

I have a weird question.

Okay.

Would you think that everybody would go through a disenchantment phase in their process?

Yeah.

Even people who have,

From the outside,

No particular reason to actually feel disenchanted,

Somebody with a lot of money,

Successful,

Happy marriage,

Bloody,

Bloody far.

And oh my goodness,

That doesn't bring me the deepest happiness I really thought,

And I have put so much time and energy into all this stuff,

And oh my goodness.

And maybe do a little meditation or something and hit some of the lower or middle or upper jhanas and say,

That is so much,

And I've put all the time into money.

So theoretically I think it's possible.

I just can't imagine a situation in which we don't at some point hit that process.

And the value of saying that is saying if you hit that where things like,

You know,

Everything is all falling apart,

I did it all wrong,

That can be a sign of really deep progress and wisdom.

So do you want to hear this little blog of mine?

I woke around 12.

30 in the morning,

Rolled over and began to slide back into slumber.

A thought drifted lightly through my mind.

He is an emotional coward.

He referred to a man with whom I had a difficult relationship.

I had handled with equanimity,

Empathy,

And compassion.

I had been a paragon of kind maturity.

The phrase emotional coward captured the essence of what I found difficult,

And the angry vapor seeping out of the phrase brought me back from the edge of sleep.

Send him an email.

Tell him he's an emotional coward,

I thought.

I no longer felt like a paragon of compassion.

I'd like to stick a finger in his eye.

Beneath my spiritual sensibilities was a tantrum that had been quietly pushing aside.

I might have been able to subdue the ire,

But when I fight the truth,

I always lose sooner or later.

And the truth was I was angry.

The genie was out of the bottle and I had no desire to try to push it back in.

Now I was thoroughly awake.

I got out of bed,

Wrapped up in a blanket,

And sat down to meditate.

I did the refuges and the precepts and the two aspirations.

I seek to observe the mind-heart without preference.

I seek clarity and acceptance.

My object of meditation was equanimity,

Sending it out in all directions.

After a short while,

It began to thin out into a clear mind.

Then a thought erupted.

I want to tell him this,

This,

This,

And that.

I didn't really want to poke him in the eye,

But a good tongue-lashing would feel very satisfying.

I recognized the flush of anger.

Meditation,

After all,

Is a purification process.

As the mind-heart quiets down,

Psychic toxins can rush to the surface.

It's healing.

So I just let the feelings be.

I released them in the sense of not trying to hold on to them or push them away.

I gave them plenty of space to romp around inside.

At the same time,

I relaxed the tension in them.

It felt like relaxing into the anger.

I smiled slightly and sent out equanimity.

This would be a better way to say it,

I thought.

That'll get him.

An hour later,

Waves of righteousness continued to arise through me,

Followed by moments of quiet,

Followed by another wave.

I just tried to stay out of the way and let them do their thing.

They'd throw me off balance for a moment.

I'd feel it,

Release it,

Relax into it,

Return to equanimity,

Only to have another wave throw me against the rocks.

I had hoped this would subside,

But it kept going.

I felt discouraged.

I recognized the discouragement as just another impersonal energy.

I released it,

Let it be,

Softened into it,

Smiled.

Fifteen minutes later,

I noticed the thoughts no longer had any specific content.

They still reverberated like buffaloes stamping across the plains,

But I couldn't make out an individual animal anymore.

They weren't specific thoughts,

Just thundering hooves.

Then the rumbling ceased.

There was still aversion,

But no content.

I continued to recognize what was going on in the mind,

Heart,

Released it,

Relaxed into it,

Smiled softly,

And sent out peacefulness.

Then it was all gone.

There was only a pervading quiet and ease.

Vaguely,

I remembered I had been upset about something,

But it took effort to recall what the fuss was about.

Oh,

Yes,

That guy!

Compassion welled up in me for his suffering that made him behave so badly.

There was nothing I could do about it,

So I let it drift away like the last clouds fading into a clear sky.

There was a slight luminosity in the back of my mind.

I thought it peculiar that I found it easier to recognize upset than that quiet glow,

So I just relaxed into it.

In a while,

I winked out.

When I came back,

My mind-heart was soft,

Quietly joyful and expansive,

And my body was fatigued.

It was 2.

30 in the morning.

I crawled back into bed and slid into sleep.

So,

Shall we share the merit?

And then I'll be around if you want to talk some more,

And we'll give people a graceful exit if they need it.

Oh,

Wait a minute!

The quiz!

We forgot the quiz!

Does anybody have an answer?

Anybody want to guess a part of it?

So the question is.

.

.

You've six-arted,

It's gone!

We'll haul it back in.

The question is,

There's this ancient Greek,

And adopted by Christianity,

Proof of the existence of God that says everything has a cause,

Which has a cause,

And if you trace that back,

You get back to the prime cause,

Which they said is God.

And then the question is,

How is that the same,

And how is that different than dependent origination?

So,

I won't grade you on this,

Just your thoughts about similarities or differences.

God is ignorance.

Pardon?

God is ignorance?

I think God is like.

.

.

Well,

You know,

I actually,

Not to go into too much,

But a lot of people say God did it,

And as far as I'm concerned,

That just kicks the can down the road.

So why did God do it?

Where did God come from?

Who invented God?

It doesn't answer anything.

So it does,

It just makes you say you don't need to think about this,

Because God did it.

Other thoughts?

Maybe it arises because biologically,

Over evolution,

We have been structured by the environment and by evolution to actually take account of danger in our environment,

And we've deeply embodied that into our physiology and our psychology,

And so we're trapped in that,

Because it doesn't update as fast as the environment around us,

Even though the environment around us is probably.

.

.

Does this relate to the quiz?

Yeah.

Okay.

I think so.

Okay.

At least I'm not going to be grabbed by the Inquisition,

I think,

Which is good.

Oh,

You don't know.

But the point is that the final cause is in the God model,

The final cause is God,

And in Buddhism,

We're not made by a God,

We simply arise through a natural process.

What I'm saying is that that natural process includes evolution,

Which then in humans produces that kind of structure psychologically.

Right,

Yeah.

So evolution made you do it.

Yes.

Well,

And also just to carry one step further,

In dependent origination,

Everything comes back to itself.

There is no primal cause.

It's just we're in this vast interrelated network of stuff.

Even though dependent origination operates psychologically,

Linearly,

The actual relationships are more of a network.

So there is no primal cause.

And the Buddha said to try to figure out what the primal cause will drive you crazy.

I don't know if that's a form of ignorance or not.

So it's a very richly linked system.

Yeah.

Okay.

So Doug,

I spent one walking meditation at a retreat,

Putting this all together into a song.

Who doesn't want to hear it?

Okay.

Here's,

I call it the Duke of Diner song.

I'm singing.

Yeah,

I'm singing.

So you feel so alone if you're blind,

Because the truth is the thing you can't find.

So you reach for some unmolded clay,

With an urge to make something out of this day.

You got to stop it,

Drop it,

Touch the ground,

Keep the wheel from turning round.

Something's happening here,

What it is ain't exactly clear.

It starts in your body and mind,

Then it settles on whatever your senses can find.

You got to stop it,

Drop it,

Touch the ground,

Keep the wheel from turning round.

There's a sense of a thing over there,

Telling me that I got to beware,

Making craving and claiming strike deep.

Want to have,

Want to be,

Want to go to sleep.

Whoop-a-dum,

Stop it,

Drop it,

Touch the ground,

Keep the wheel from turning round.

I've got a habit of slaking my desire,

Taking birth is just stoking the fire.

What I grasp I will have to put down.

Built a duke,

A diner in my hometown,

Stop it,

Drop it,

Touch the ground,

Keep the wheel from turning round.

So now you all have broken a precept.

Do you get dispensation for the good song?

No,

This is a reincarnation of Mara.

Yes,

We will all die of literalism if we go there.

All right,

Any more songs,

Comments?

Are we ready to close?

You mentioned that you say at the end you're going to touch the 7R.

Oh,

Friday.

Oh,

Not today.

Right,

Yeah.

This is not important,

But just my sensitivity is at a point where every time you mention an ice cream sundae or a ice cream,

That that thought,

That image goes through my consciousness about 450,

000 times.

It's a wonderful practice to let go of ice cream every night during the Dabotoks.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Well,

And you've seen some of my habitual tendencies too.

In the first church that I served,

I was,

There was a guy who asked if we would host a speaker whose name was Shantidas,

Lanz del Vasto.

He was in Gandhi's inner circle.

And he was,

When I met him,

It was like I knew I had met a saint.

There were people in the church that night who had never seen an aura who saw his all over the place.

And,

You know,

He was about six foot three with this boxwood walking stick that he'd been carving for 10 years with a story of Noah and the Ark on it.

And just this incredible presence.

And after everything was done,

It was at a church,

So they brought,

You know,

Some goodies and stuff for people to have afterwards.

And people were talking as we were cleaning up,

And most people had cleared out.

And this woman,

Libby,

Was there cleaning up,

And she'd got some ice cream out of the refrigerator and a glass of juice.

And he walked right over to her and said,

Do you have any more ice cream and juice?

And he had such a precious,

Well,

Here have these.

And I thought from then on,

You know,

If Lanz del Vasto of Shantidas likes ice cream and juice,

And I like ice cream and juice,

Then I'm in good company.

Well,

We have juice.

And there's ice cream in the mall.

And you're probably shocked in the mall.

Yeah,

But what you do when you go shopping?

I have a question,

So if you'd like something,

Please ask me afterwards.

Okay.

Okay,

Anything more?

Are we ready to.

.

.

Thank you all for being here,

For your practice,

For your questions,

For the aliveness of your humor and spirits.

It's really.

.

.

I get to sit up here with everybody facing,

You know,

And so I get to feel all of it at once.

It's really,

Really lovely.

It's really lovely.

So.

.

.

Knowing how deeply we are all connected together,

How our happiness and equanimity can touch and inspire that in others,

Knowing all the ways that we are truly more like one large organism with lots of separate bodies,

Knowing this,

We send out loving-kindness to the other parts of ourselves that are out there in other bodies.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings know their true nature.

May all beings have lots of ice cream.

May all beings have sweet dreams.

May it be so.

Reviews

Clesr speaking and communication. Easy to listen to.

For such a significantly beneficial tool made accessible by Doug in this talk, I am profoundly grateful.