We'll start, and those who straggle in, we can figure out what to do with them. I'd like to start by having, starting with Ross, have everybody count off from one to four, and remember your number. Okay? It's important that you remember it. One, two, three. No, one to four. Oh, wait. I messed up, actually. We'll start over again. You'll get another chance. Judy, this is for the small groups. And Judy, Andrea, Rebecca, and myself are going to facilitate them. So those us four will not take numbers.

[01:01]

Right. OK. So one. Wait a second. It's like counting your breath. You'll be three. Right. You just have to make sure that if you're counting your breath, just make sure that the number of inhalations equal the number of exhalations. Or catch up at the end of the period. OK. Let's start. We're counting from one to four. So start here. Three. Four. 1, 2, 3, 4, [...] 1, 2, 3. OK. Does everyone remember their number? Okay, the number... No Trump.

[02:07]

What? No Trump. Right. Okay, these are going to be, we're going to break up into small groups pretty quickly here. And the ones will go actually with me to my house. The twos will go with Andrea to her house. The threes will stay with Judy here. And the fours will go with Rebecca to the Zendel. Okay? What I'd like to do this week, and we'll see how this works, is we'll start the class by reading the Berkeley Zen Center version of the precepts that I've handed out, and then we'll break into these small groups for about a half an hour and discuss your thoughts and questions and your experience of the precepts that we were working with this week, which are the precept not to kill and not to take what is not given.

[03:10]

what we need, each group will have, the facilitator will take some notes so they can generally report back. And for each group, quickly when you get there, pick somebody who's a timekeeper, someone who probably has a watch. then we'll go until in the small groups until 8.10 and then come back here hopefully within and be able to start kind of reporting back and having a full group discussion by about 8.15 and then I'll make a presentation about the precepts that we'll work on for this coming week in about 15 or 20 minutes at the end. And we'll see how this works. I'll tell you what my wariness is. I'm a little concerned that as I'm presenting this material, sometimes that's when the questions come up.

[04:18]

That's when questions come up first, and there's going to be... and we're going to want to talk about them. And this doesn't really leave a lot of opportunity to do that. You sort of have to sit with it through the week. So it might take... on the one hand, that might be very rich. On the other hand, it might take some of the edge off. of immediacy off, and we'll see how it works. Also, energy is going to kind of get drained as we go out and then come back, so it's going to be difficult to kind of keep up, but I guess we can all make the effort to do that. If we're quiet, it'll probably be better. If we're quiet coming back? Yeah, and going out. Yeah. We'll maintain the frame of mind. Right. Thank you. So we can, but you can feel free to discuss your questions about the precepts and your experience and then the facilitator can come back and report back or ask someone else to report if somebody else has something that seemed like it had a charge or some

[05:21]

real urgency to it, the facilitator can ask them to speak for themselves, and we can then ask questions and talk. And that's about it so far. Any questions? Okay, do you all have your copies of the precepts? Who doesn't? Let's just read the first two together, both the precepts and also the part that says, doshi, you know, sort of the commentary. So, I vow not to kill. By not killing life, the Buddha seed grows. Transmit the life of the Buddha and do not kill. I vow not to take what is not given. The self and objects are such, two yet one.

[06:24]

The gate of liberation stands open. Okay, so group number one with me to my house, group number two with Andrea to her house, group number three with Judy here, and group number four with Rebecca to the Zendo. Everyone except the people in the Zendo, bring your Zafus with you to the houses and bring them back. It also could catalyze It could catalyze some of your thinking about the precepts in the week. We're not going to study it as such. It's the only book I know that's about the precepts in language that is accessible to us. Well, welcome back.

[07:31]

Pretty good. 17 seconds to go. Well, we have about a half hour, a little more. We could have some reporting back, but I'd like there to be some kind of discussion, so we may not cover all of these things. We might, what I would like people to do maybe from the groups is pick one or two things that seem to have the strongest charge and see where that goes. So, maybe you want to start with your group? Well, two people in the group had some interesting stories to tell about some people that they were taking care of who were dying. And I wanted them to report back on that, and if they'd like to now, they can.

[08:38]

We didn't get to stealing so much. A couple people talked about it, and I was What I observed from the group is nobody said, I really tried to do this this week and I did really well at it. It was more like, I mean I kind of thought that's what it was going to be like, but that didn't come up at all, really, I don't think, in the group. I was working on this preset this week and I was successful or something. It was more like just experiences that came to mind. Which I thought was good. Yeah, I think that's the level at which it's going to... Do you want to report on your... I'll just talk about this briefly. I'm taking care of this fella. He's an AIDS patient and he's lost a lot of mental and physical functions over the months.

[09:43]

I'm not the only caregiver. and he was an art historian, he is an art historian, and so I think a lot of this loss is, you know, very ugly to him and un-aesthetic. But the point is that he was talking about suicide a couple weeks ago and when he brought it up, I, you know, all in a millisecond sort of reviewed options as to how to respond when he brought up the subject. Like I could change the subject or I could ask him to, you know, tell me more or I could just be silent. So, I ended up asking him to tell me more about what he was thinking about.

[10:49]

And it was just more of a wish than it was a real plan of his. And I talked to Mei Li. Mei Li knows this guy. She says that this sort of loss is more transformation. She has a lot of experience with this. I've seen a number of people go through this transformation. And when I asked her about that, I was trying to compare in my own mind the difference between this fellow dying and thinking about killing himself. And my mother dying, and it was entirely different, because my mother was an Alzheimer's patient. She lived for a long time without being able to communicate with anybody.

[11:51]

So that's about all I have to say. But where does the vowing not to kill come in, Charlie? Well, I mean, if you had asked me to help him, I certainly would have. I mean, that's very clear. But at the other hand, I mean, I wasn't going to deny his feelings by changing the subject on him, or by giving him a lecture about the value of life. I wonder if he had had a real specific plan what he was going to do. Well, I don't know. I certainly would have had to reassess things under those circumstances, but that wasn't the case. I have something I want to say about this, about killing. killing as a compassionate act or not killing and trying to distinguish the difference between the two because I have been involved in something that's very... I'll just deal with this very briefly.

[13:05]

I had a cat that was extremely ill with cancer and was dying. In order to... any kind of effort to save its life involved this really awful procedure of... because the cat was becoming dehydrated, large amounts of fluid had to be given to the cat subcutaneously. The cat didn't want that done to him. He would do everything he could to escape when that was being done. Every time I was going to do that, it felt like it was tormenting the cat. But it was my opinion. I did not, but I felt that euthanasia was I was opposed to euthanasia. My co-owner of the cat, which is Vicky here, felt that we should have euthanasia because she was interested in ending the cat's suffering and I was interested in protecting the cat's life. Ultimately we decided on euthanasia and I remember watching the cat being injected

[14:11]

lethal injection and watching it die instantaneously. And I remember as the veterinarian tried to insert the needle, the cat felt the first stick of the needle and tried to pull his leg away. And so to me it was like this. you know, wanting life, wanting not to suffer, everything confused in a jumble. No simple decision could be made. And it was like, I couldn't distinguish what was compassion, really, literally we had two opinions, both seeking compassion, and yet opposed. And it was very difficult to sort out the decision. way of describing the dilemma of caring for this very old man, because he... I mean, of course, he's not a cat.

[15:31]

He can communicate to a limited extent, but that's part of the problem. He can communicate less and less and less as his life winds down. And so the responsibility of the caregivers, of which there are a number, includes not the decision to, so to speak, administer euthanasia, but to withhold those things which are absolutely critical to his life, or could be critical to his life, including the administration of fluids intravenously, and inserting a nasogastral tube to get nourishment into him, and so on. But then things move on, conditions change, and the person may not be able to express themselves anymore, and you realize that the conditions are very different from the time in which you thought you had an idea of what the right decision would be for that person.

[16:44]

And in the end, you're actually, I mean, I feel, I share this responsibility with others who've been caring for this person for a long time with me. But still, among us, we, at some point, will have to decide whether to tell the doctors to give fluids or not, because someone's going to make that decision, and they will ask us. We're the conservators for this man. Does that mean that he has given you that authority? Yes. That's right. And so, anyway, not giving those life-sustaining things is tantamount to killing him. But, I mean, if you had a clear sense, well, the man wanted to die, that was his intention to leave his body, particularly if you could see that in a kind of Buddhist context, you'd say, well, that's not killing.

[17:52]

Or at least I could see it that way. Yeah, the gerbil power. Yeah. Specifically. Right. Specifically. Yeah, that's all real clear. That part is clear. I'm sorry. I lost track of what I was saying. I think there's a question in this too. It's just, do we let people die? Do we allow for the fact Everybody dies of something, which I suppose one could think of some ways in which it could be altered, changed, postponed. But is allowing someone to die the same as killing them? is not, in a sense, killing an impulse or an intention, not necessarily just the ending of a biological life.

[19:14]

And that becomes quite intense. What's the impulse? And how does one read that? Well, you could say, oh, well, he's decided to die. But then if you offer him some food a few moments later, he takes it. So that's not quite. And I mean, this past week, that kind of thing occurred. And I said to Par, I mean, my way of trying to cope with this was to say, Par, when you say want food and water, I will not press you any longer to take food and water. I mean, the nurses and so on all want me to do it, and because I'm close to him, in some situations I can be successful where they're not, and so they engage me and the others who care for him to do that.

[20:26]

The question is, what does PAR want? How do we promote his intention? I have a son who is brain damaged from a suicide attempt and he was in a coma for weeks and someone gave me a book called Coma by Arnold Mindle. Arnie was here after the Oakland riots and did a lot of reconciliation stuff, but his real expertise is dealing with people who are dying. And he comes from a Jungian point of view, and I would think that anybody who is dealing with people in that situation would very much benefit from that book, because what he says is there is work going on, even, and his expertise is communicating with people in that state and helping them through the work that they're doing. And that it's largely symbolic, like in a dream state, but it's still work.

[21:29]

They still have stuff to do. And they know it. And they're in there doing it. Which, for me, makes it even less clear who has the right to say it's over. because from the outside it looks like the person is not there. Seems to me that the attention should be the key if the person who is experiencing the life should their decision, should be their decision, not the doctor's if someone gives them power of attorney that If you go relate to the decision of that person as you assess it, then that would be your guide.

[22:31]

It's probably very hard to do that though. Yeah, it is. I think that's what he said. There was a stage at which, well somebody stopped me because I could go on. survive it, even though he's a very old man, he has a pretty strong heart, good lungs, good kidneys. Or whether we should just make him comfortable and let the infection take its course, and that would be the end of his life. And there was this time of being, you know, the doctors are all saying, well, these are your options, and so on and so forth, but then there's Par, you know, and what does he want to do?

[23:40]

And, you know, I said, if we take you to Kaiser and so on, they will do surgery on you and it may kill you. It may not. You may be able to pull through it. And if you stay here with the infection and so on, you will probably die in a few days. And, I mean, I said this in different ways. And to ask him yes and no questions, I just said, And I mean, it just unleashed all this medical activity, which was clearly his intention. And in a way, that was, well, it took some subtlety and effort to get the clear answer. Then we could all be muscular and do things and save his life. And sure enough, he pulled through it. But the stage he's in now is even tougher than that. It's not acute. Let's, I think we should go on to some other reports from Judy's group.

[24:56]

Yeah, well it's interesting because what came up for us a lot was just this sitting with contradiction and sitting with a lot of questions about not knowing where to draw the line on to kill or not to kill. And we talked about weeds and snails and whether you could kill somebody in self-defense. and mostly we kind of kept coming back to, I think the pain of having to sit with a lot of questions and not very many answers. And then we also went to the more subtle levels of not just the physical act of killing, but things like killing spirit, or killing ideas, or killing someone's creativity, you know, thoughts, so kind of taking it from the from the real physical act to something subtler, and then the questions become even more. We didn't get too much done on stealing either, but what we did realize in talking, someone pointed out that they could really see how this first precept does contain all the others because to kill is to steal.

[26:17]

And then we talked a little bit about stealing time, like wasting time in Zazen or doing personal work when you're, you know, personal business when you're at work. So we started to get into that and then had to quit. But just that it seemed like that the gray areas about stealing were many more and subtler than the gray areas about killing. It's a little bit more difficult for people. And the importance of, you know, just knowing where your line in killing is, you know. If you eat meat, if you don't eat meat, if you kill ants in the house, if you don't kill ants in the house, you know, whatever that line is. I'd like to ask somebody else to do it, because I've been so involved in this. Susan, would you sort of report back on the group? Sue. a lot of the same things that have already been said.

[27:26]

One person worked outside and talked about having to kill animals in his work life and others of us had similar experiences past times like fishing and gardening, bringing up How do we deal with those kinds of killings? And then we talked a lot about killing ideas and killing thoughts. And the question of killing another life in self-defense is someone else's life less valuable than my own or someone who I would kill for. And the idea of someone thought about a question you brought up, Alan, last week about killing spirits and what that meant to her.

[28:36]

What did you mean? You should say it, because you said it so much better than I will. Well, I guess I thought about spirits and killing ghosts. And I decided that the closest I could come up with spirits was about the relationships, that the relationship between two people and between things is sort of outside of either person. It's like a spirit. And that I would sort of work on nurturing those spirits within the family, especially between my daughter and myself. And in terms of killing ghosts, I sort of went back to that idea that, I guess sort of American Indian idea, that you take in parts of the people who are close to you that have died, and they live in you. And to sort of nourish what I'd learned from those people inside myself, it was a way of

[29:43]

And thinking about nurturing is a way of not killing instead of, so sort of thinking about those people and those things that I had learned this week. Back to you. And I guess the final way that we talked about killing was in terms of not being able to judge when others do kill in self-defense or in places in the world where killing is going on. after having tried through peaceful means to accomplish certain things, that while we might not necessarily believe in killing, we found we couldn't judge those who were involved in taking up arms. Stealing, we talked about grazing in supermarkets and we talked about There were stories from the past. Someone spoke about a story of stealing when he was a child and feeling really terrible about that and saving the money to return that.

[30:53]

How it brought up all these bad feelings. And how we justify stealing in really subtle ways. Or that question comes up. Think of anything else we talked about. It was interesting to me, we also got much more involved in the taking life thing. We kept coming back to that, where stealing was sort of included in that. We each had some incident, sort of like what you were saying, Andrea, rather than thinking about the precept and did we do it or not, it brought up something. For Ross, he was talking about, he said, it's assumed that I take what's not given and I go from there.

[32:04]

And he was talking about being, having his own harshly and seeing that his own idea of what should be, I'm paraphrasing you, Ros, but it was burning the spirit of working together. Let's see. Maybe someone else, I think I'm in the middle of it, maybe. What else can I say about this? It seems like we're all struggling with the ideal of what we should be doing, particularly Lois was talking about that, of the three levels that Alan had mentioned, of the literal and the compassion, and having the ideal of what we'd like to be doing, and judging ourselves harshly.

[33:07]

Lois was talking about having given everything away for her students to sit upon and having repercussions that way and struggling with that. I don't know what else to say. one's own life and also taking another's life or stealing from them in some sense. It's a manifestation of what we'll later get to when we talk about not harboring ill will. I think that's next week, but it's so soon you're killing it. How do you deal with that? Maybe an act of confession is called for, was what this person was saying.

[34:11]

It was quite powerful. You know, one of the things that sort of occurred to me, sort of listening to what you were talking about, kind of the killing, is that usually the context we're kind of talking about, it's always in terms of Where do we take it? Why are we there with this person? or killing, or having to kill, or stealing, in fact, I think it's a reflection of the fact that as long as there are individual selves, or perceived individual

[35:44]

You know, I eliminate another self because of some motivation in order to promote myself or just in a very subtle sense of interrupting what someone else is saying because I want what I have to say to be heard and I don't care about what they have to say. or eating another being because I want to nurture my individual being and so I'm cutting off their individual being, whether it be a cow or a carrot. And so I think that my impression is we have all these beings in this world And it's almost like for all these beings to be here in this world and not impact each other, and not cut each other's being off, and stealing is simply just removing the means of being from one being and appropriating it for yourself. And so for us, all these beings, to be able to be in this world without cutting each other's being off, I think is a dilemma that's going to exist.

[36:55]

And I don't know how it comes to an end unless it comes to an end by realization that individual self is not what we're, is not to be, is not the objective or is not promoting the individual self. But I really do feel that it's all, killing is promoting the individual self and negating the other self and whether it be murder or Interrupting what someone's saying Well, I think that the root of I think that yeah the notion of self and other the notion of this this duality And self has a concrete thing And yet as a daily fact, we live with ourselves. We can only examine, truly examine ourselves.

[38:02]

So this is what Judy was saying about having to live with these contradictions, having to sit there with them. You know, so where are you in there? And that's, it's difficult. Well, I think if I'm going to get to this other stuff, which I really need to get to, we're going to have to end this here, sort of, artificially. This is, I don't know, my feeling in the room was this is very painful stuff. Very painful stuff coming up very hard. There are moments when I felt like I wanted to leave the room.

[39:09]

here. And it's hard to listen to this, and we may find that might be a recurring experience, although dealing with, beginning by dealing with not taking life, beginning with that deepest root, you know, maybe It's something that we all can really touch on very easily. We all experience that. But I think we'll find some of that in all the other precepts. May I make a suggestion? Yeah. Can we have a bit of Zazen? Yeah, that's a good idea. And in this discussion? about not misusing sex and not intoxicating self or others.

[40:16]

Bodhidharma's precept says, self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the ungilded dharma, not giving rise to attachments is called the precept of not misusing sex. Thus, self-nature is subtle and mysterious in the realm of the ungilded dharma. Not giving rise to attachments is called the precept of not misusing sex. Dogen's version says, the three wheels of self, object, and action are pure. With nothing to desire, one goes along together with the Buddhas. The three wheels of self, object, and action are pure. With nothing to desire, one goes along with the Buddhists. In Bodhidharma's precept of not intoxicating self or others, self-nature is subtle and mysterious.

[41:19]

In the realm of the intrinsically pure dharma, not giving rise to delusions is called the precept of not giving or taking drugs. In the realm of the intrinsically pure dharma, not giving rise to delusions is called the precept of not giving or taking drugs. In Dogen's version, there's a couple ways of phrasing it. One kind of literal way is, do not introduce intoxicants. Do not make others defile themselves. This is the great awareness. Do not sell the wine of delusion. Another version that we use here is originally pure, don't defile. This is the great awareness. Do not sell the wine of delusion. So I find it really hard to get my mind around these precepts. It's hard to talk about them because they reach really deeply into our, or my, everyday experience.

[42:26]

These two, each delineates, each one delineates a particular area of desire or delusion, but they seem to be very closely linked, particularly in our culture where sex and drugs are so bound up with each other. where delusion and addiction seem to mark many of our relationships. I just had a question. False speech? I'm skipping that. If you read the syllabus, you'll see. I'm sort of trying to group them so that they make some sense. I'll start again with a small confession, like last time. I think if it wasn't for drugs, I might have missed the path and I wouldn't be here, and I don't think that's so unusual. It's probably more the rule than the exception for people who are practicing of my particular generation and background.

[43:29]

This is the experience of a psychedelically altered or alternative reality, which led me so directly to Zendodor 25 years ago. but it actually gave me no taste or patience for the practice of sitting zazen. So I got up and walked away for 15 years before I could actually recall a thought of enlightenment and act on it and returned, by amazing coincidence, right here to Berkeley Zen Center. So, time is short. So, on the literal level, there isn't an awful lot of leeway here. Particularly for a monk, these precepts mean celibacy and abstinence. And for lay people, not misusing sex would mean practicing respectful sexuality based on love, building intimacy and sharing between people. and not intoxicating self or others also implies a strong sense of responsibility.

[44:37]

Some of us might have a glass of wine or a hit of marijuana and actually we can do that mindfully considering our surroundings and the people around us. And it's actually up to each of us to draw a line of what what defines intoxication. And sometimes that's a mighty fine line to draw, really hard. But there are many other desires that claim us, drugs that cloud our naturally pure view of things. For instance, television, food, tobacco, coffee, work, possessions, pride, And what? Emotions. In fact, things like... What? The printed word. The printed word. Newspaper to the magazine. Or to the mysteries that some of us are addicted to.

[45:42]

And we don't know why. Robust calls it brain candy. Cereal box. Mysteries that invariably involve much killing. But it seems that actually these non-material intoxicants like emotions, pride, are They can be every bit as destructive. They all can feed the self in the same destructive way, and they certainly can unseat us in the zendo, obscuring a perfect present moment with some impossible and unquenchable longing. So the way Yasutani Roshi, whose commentary I've been sort of looking through, studying as I'm working on this, he says, he urges us to refrain from imbibing the liquor of dualism, which I think is something like what Kathy was getting at a few minutes ago.

[46:48]

So refrain from imbibing the liquor of dualism. I think that's pretty good. So that's just a few comments on the literal level. The Mahayana view of these precepts underscores compassion. In Zazen, we recognize that the desires and hungers arise naturally in our lives, and they are actually some of our deepest habits. During my first row, Hatsu Seshin, for the first three days, for some reason, all I could think of was a hamburger. I walked to the Berkeley Bowl and purchased the first round, chewy thing that I could find, which was a bagel. You know, because actually this was all just in my mind, there was nothing wrong with the food or nothing division, that my desire ebbed away, that satisfied it. I just needed something just to fill that desire.

[47:50]

I had to keep my mind busy because I wasn't able just to sit there and experience the present moment. So I let that busyness just cycle and cycle and cycle. And other examples of this, I don't know if any of you have ever fallen in and out of love or lust in this endo. That can happen really quickly. And it's kind of natural that it does. You know, and it's interesting because it can happen in the course of a period of zazen. You can create an incredible desire for a person, you know, whose back or shoulder you might be able to see. And, you know, if you're able to, or shadow. But the question is, when does this become an intoxication?

[49:10]

I mean, this is a natural thing, that it comes up like this. But it becomes an intoxication when we build on it, when we build on that desire, and we cling to it, and we find ourselves doing it period after period of zazen, or we find ourselves pursuing that person whom we don't know, necessarily. But it's just this idea in our mind. And the responsibility to take care of this is entirely our own. And yet, we have to know how to face ourselves with compassion, with a bodhisattva's compassion, to be kind to ourselves and to love ourselves by recognizing that the rising of these passions is the normal workings of our human state. I think it's interesting, in the Mahayana Sutra that someone pointed out to me this week, there's a sutra that's known as the Definitive Vinaya, and in response to a question about what might drive a bodhisattva to break a precept,

[50:19]

which is a more serious cause, breaking a precept in desire or breaking a precept in anger, which is the more serious of the two. The Buddha responds, a bodhisattva who breaks precepts out of desire still holds sentient beings in his embrace, whereas one who breaks precepts out of hatred forsakes sentient beings altogether. I thought that was really strong stuff. Then he addresses Upali who's been questioning him. A bodhisattva should not be afraid of the passions which can help him hold sentient beings in his embrace, but he should fear the passions which cause him or her to forsake sentient beings. So that's a really interesting context. I find that almost a paraphrase of some liberal thinkers in our society right now who say, why is it not proper to show sex on TV that you can show violence?

[51:21]

And it's kind of like saying, why is love taboo while hate is embraced? And it's sort of the same sort. I mean, I think that what's reflected in that Yeah, I was surprised to see it characterized as such, because usually you see the precepts as kind of, you know, they're sort of flat. But the distinction was very clear in here, and this is a very early and key Mahayana sutra. So it's worth, it's actually worth us thinking about. I remember somebody asking after lecture, asking Suzuki Roshi about what's the difference between love and sort of what we're trying to do here. And he said, well, love is a beginning.

[52:24]

And I hadn't thought about that in a long time, but that sort of brought it up. So it's kind of back to that intention. Yeah. So these desires come up, and while we don't indulge them, We don't turn away from them either. And when they burn, in a way, it's because we love life that much. And maybe too much, but we do love it. And again, Yasutani Roshi tells of his teacher's advice in relation to drinking. And I think this touches on this. If one must drink, he said, drink humbly in private, repentant that past habit patterns are so difficult to transform. You know, it's admitting those habit patterns are there. And it's being compassionate towards yourself.

[53:31]

And the private part is not encouraging others Right. Right. Not encouraging, just taking response for yourself. So, by extension, the Mahayana view of these precepts is to offer one's full attention and caring to all beings and things without any distinction. We also know this as metta, or loving kindness. And that's why we move our bowing mats by bending down and turning them with our hands instead of squishing them around with our feet, just to take care of them that way. Bodhidharma describes our Dharma, our inherent Dharma, as ungilded and intrinsically pure. So it's ordinary and shining at the same time. And it's worthy of our calls forth our strongest love and still is completely free. And it can turn any way.

[54:32]

It can even turn It can turn towards pain or it can turn towards joy. So this sets a very high standard for all of our relationships. So finally, what is the Buddha mind approach to these precepts? And that's simply that we already exist or we coexist in the Buddha realm of unsurpassed perfect enlightenment. That's where we live. Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi. So taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, when we take refuge there, we live directly, we live the life of one of the Buddhas that we chant in the meal chant, we chant the Sambhogakaya Buddha, which is also the bliss body of Buddha. I'm reminded of, in one of the later precepts, Dogen's words are, the sweet dew saturates all.

[55:38]

And this seems to me to be, to be living with the sweet dew saturating, saturating all, is living as the Buddha of the bliss body. Yasutani Roshi writes, in the realm of oneness there is no delusion, no unrest, no worries or quarrels. How could this not become a great awareness? Fundamentally, no liquor of dualism exists anywhere. It is something willfully brewed out of ignorance by ordinary individuals. They drink it and they cause others to drink it. So in the absolute, We are living in a realm where no wishes would arise because the moment is perfect from moment to moment. In our human form we don't tend to experience it so much that way.

[56:45]

We'd like to and yet when we get close to it we tend to turn away Watch that dynamic. You can watch it in zazen. Sometimes when your concentration is really good, all of a sudden you'll notice your concentration is really good and you'll turn away from it. It can happen again and again. So there's something in our suffering minds that keeps us on this cycle. And so we do brew the liquor of dualism out of our ignorance, but we also have an opportunity to recognize it and to keep returning to offering compassion, to doing these practices that put us outside of that dualism and to sit sasan.

[57:56]

So, finally, uniting the literal and the compassionate and the absolute precepts relating to this question of sexuality, we should also keep in mind that our human birth depends upon a sexual act, and that even the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha And all of the present and future Buddhas depends on this act. There's no inherent defilement to it. And the only problem that we have is attachment. Attachment and aversion. We can think it's a defilement or we can think it is, you know, that this act is to be all and end all the point of living and try to possess it, try to possess people. for the sake of ourselves. So it's a really tough nut to crack. I'd really like to, I wish there were more time to get down to cases, but we can do that next week.

[59:06]

In the light of these precepts, we can consider our habits of sexuality, relationship, marriage, abortion, consumption, the way we use power, And I hope we can talk about them more next week, because all of these actually, on the one hand, they turn us away from the path, and on the other hand, they're also included in the Buddhadharma. They can poison our lives if we give them that power, or they can lead us further along the path. It's really all how we choose to be, to use or be used by our life. So, for next week, again, try to think about your experience of sexuality and your experience of using and offering intoxicants on these three levels. On the literal level, on the compassionate level, and on the level of the absolute.

[60:12]

you can take it from there. Any particular questions? Go over it. The absolute is that you're already living in the world of bliss. You're living with all of your desires fulfilled in the present moment. There's nothing to desire because Life is perfect. There's nothing to escape from, and there's nothing to escape to. That's just a crass way of putting it. And what you feel about that, it's your job to explore that, and we can talk about it together. If anyone is looking for copies of Akin Roshi's book, which Charlie asked, I recommend it as a text.

[61:19]

We're not going to study it as such, but it can give you the context in a little greater depth for thinking about some of this. And it also takes in its analysis. While the thrust is a little different than what I'm doing, the terms of the analysis, in terms of this literal and compassionate and Buddha nature, precepts is in there. So I have some copies that are available here. Thank you. Good night.

[61:48]

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