if you're all well this evening. Is there any announcement or any housekeeping or anything that needs doing? Who's job is that? Well, tonight we take up the precepts precepts in the realm of right speech, refraining from false speech, refraining from slander or speaking ill of others, and refraining from praising self at the expense of others. Things that I think of as the the hardest precepts to keep, although this week, while I was studying for next week, it's a toss-up between this one and harboring ill will.

[01:03]

It's pretty close. But actually, they're not so different. They're really not that different. Let's read these precepts together, and then go into our small groups. Now, does everybody have a group? Everyone is in a group, and everyone knows what group they're with, not necessarily what number of groups. You know where you are and where you're going. Rebecca is back. And, oh, Bill's not here. Okay, so we'll start with Number four. I vow to refrain from false speech. The dharma wheel turns from the beginning. There is neither surplus nor lack. The sweetened juice saturates all and harvests the truth. I vow not to slander.

[02:04]

In the Buddha dharma, go together, appreciate, realize, and actualize together. Don't permit false do not corrupt the way. I vow not to praise self at the expense of others. Buddhas and ancestors realize the vast sky and the great earth. When they manifest the noble body, there is neither inside nor outside emptiness. When they manifest the Dharma body, there is not even a bit of earth on the ground. Well, we had some questions that I handed out last time, and again, those are just for kind of points of reference. You can answer them or speak to them, speak from your experience as best you can, or ignore them entirely and just go from your experience for whatever questions come up. It's now, I have 7.35.

[03:05]

Let's go until about 8.10 and then come back here, be back, kind of ready to start by 8.15 or so. Take your cushions. Who would like to, which group would like to start in reporting back? Well, we, it was a lively group, lively talk, and there's a lot, so I'll try to run through it. We started with We were talking about the distinction between gossip that's justifiable and information-gathering versus malicious gossip, and the fine, maybe unrecognizable distinctions sometimes.

[04:13]

It's various opinions on it. One person put out that it's a way to validate one's experience, or a group of persons' experience with another person. Or is it just plain gossip about the labeling? And it's a way of maybe perhaps talking amongst people about another person as a way of testing one's experience and interactions and finding out where one is related to that person. Sounds a little abstract. Well, it wasn't abstract. There were specific instances we brought up, without naming names. What do you want here? Well, I don't want to use the name.

[05:17]

Say it again. Well, I have a lot more. Maybe it'll clarify as I just go. I'll just keep reading it. And these are my notes, so if anybody can bring it more down to earth, it'd be helpful. So... So, gossip is like boxing people into categories and, you know, and kind of saying who they are and who you are in relation to them and kind of setting up identities for oneself and others, which is kind of opposite, what we're saying is kind of opposite of, you know, transiency in the notion that character maybe isn't so rigid and is, you know, kind of written on water in a sense. And maybe it's a way of talking about persons as a way of avoiding seeing them clearly and looking at them from a heartfelt position.

[06:28]

Rebecca brought up how grade school and Tassajara were kind of the same, you know, you're in this tight, tight space for, in grade school for eight years, you know, with all these people, you know, and in Tassajara we were there in just this narrow space, and you keep pumping into the same people all the time, the people you're having trouble with all the time, you know, up and down the path, and you're having conflict with them, and So I'm not quite sure that's related. And then gossip is fueling a fire. One person gave a story of how he was having a lot of trouble with the person whom he felt was unprofessional and so he brought it up with uh... another colleague and then suddenly the whole plane glommed on the whole uh... group glommed on to this uh... person as you know this kind of awful person and how unprofessional and they couldn't put the fire out they kept going and going so gossip can really fuel

[07:40]

fire, and we can use a person as a scapegoat and kind of a dumpster in tight situations. And people talked about their practice, but not being how to practice with gossip and with fault-finding. of making the effort not to be drawn into a situation where you have a possibility of talking about another person. But gossip can be also a way of expressing one's curiosity about people and about their stories. That's that kind of hard to tell. what the different ways that talking about others can be used. In the media, one person spoke about how the media really encourages us to gossip and to look into the personal lives of other people that we have no business really looking into.

[08:55]

We talked about how we're our own worst critics, about a kind of an internal slandering and berating, beating ourselves up. That familiar voice inside. that we often see mirrored outside. When someone slanders us or hurts us with hard words, sometimes it's not so uncomfortable, it sounds kind of familiar. Another way to break a pattern of kind of internally, or slandering another person, or fault-finding, or praising yourself at the expense of others, is to give a gift, sometimes a kind word, a gift of speech. It can be a really great way. As someone mentioned, it's a difficult habit to learn, but we have to create new habit patterns, and break the pattern,

[10:19]

At first it feels really unnatural and uncomfortable, but with practice it can be done. And of course, I know that someone else mentioned the practice of seeing. Whenever you have a strong charge about someone and reacting to someone in a negative way, you can do the practice of seeing what's being reflected in yourself. What do you see of yourself and that person at that moment? Well, under the rubric of refraining from false speech and just lying, per se, it was funny. I found that there's a lot of people speaking about lying,

[11:24]

which, although it was acknowledged lying, had mitigating circumstances in a way. Like there was lying just as an error in communication, like not really recalling the truth or not really having a handle on the truth and therefore misrepresenting the truth. Lying because the circumstances of our lives have created binding situations which are just to prevent just prevent us from any other options, and lying as self-defense in a helpless situation, being incapable of avoiding it, just as a self-preservation technique. But I think the foremost form of lying that was spoken about in our group, which was not mitigated by anything, was lying to oneself, being unwilling to see the truth, see just what is the truth, and therefore telling lies to ourselves.

[12:36]

And then, in the area of fault-finding or slander. Again, a big topic was self-slander, fault-finding with the self, kind of reviling and abusing ourselves. And that seemed to work, I think I brought up the fact, that seemed to work in a kind of oscillation or a pendulum thing between self-slandering and self-praising. They seem connected in some way, as they did to me. Also, the pain of being falsely accused of being a victim on the receiving end of slander was discussed. And also, another issue that was raised was a certain perverse pleasure that's derived, that the motivation of slander might be that it somehow is fun or something that we just sort of can't resist.

[13:54]

I think that that may lead into the next topic of praising self at the expense of others, because maybe the reason why slander can be fun is because it might give one a feeling of elevation above another person. self-aggrandizing speech. I don't think... People brought up that around here, specifically at BCC, in this environment, there isn't a lot of outward things like slander and self-aggrandizement. But one of the things that I feel is always something that is a potential thing happening, is an internal slander and self-aggrandizement. And I really do think that those are like two sides of the same coin.

[14:58]

What is slander? What is self-aggrandizement in a way, except that like a remedy for self-slander, kind of like, because we're so obsessed with with ourselves, we have to tell lies about them, either elevating them or condemning them. And that's all the notes I have. Does anybody from our group want to add? I'm sure my notes are incomplete. It was a good digestion to reorganize our stuff. Not to open a can of worms, but do people really think that there isn't self-aggrandizement here?

[16:00]

I'm sure there is internally, and if no one else is doing it, I am. What I meant to say was that very rarely do I hear someone say, you know, that person can't say Zazen for doo-doo, you know. oak, but I do think it happens. I'll let it go. Lest you fall into the trap of self-slander. I had a thought before when Kathy was speaking also about, well, this is treacherous ground, but the urge for slander, when you're talking about the desire to use a way of inflating yourself or covering the lack of feeling, is that, in a way, it also feels like an urge for intimacy and a perverse way of dealing with it, and you can't get closer, so one thing you can do is attack.

[18:31]

I'm not advocating this, obviously, but there is a... It's just this feeling of people get angry and disappointed that they can't get closer, can't figure out how to get close to so-and-so, and could find a way to cultivate a negative side. And even talking about that person allows you some kind of intimacy that you don't have. just neutral, that you're walking through space one past the other. And so it creates a kind of illusion of intimacy, and it's very common in the society where we're not, we're very isolated and prevented or inhibited. I'm not sure it creates an illusion of intimacy. I think it might create a real intimacy, it just may not be a wholesome kind, Yeah. Okay. I don't know. It seems very familial to me.

[19:33]

I think I was maybe... the image of intimacy for me always comes up with glowing colors. So I think I left the shadow alone. But I think that the precepts actually allow you both sides of intimacy. You know, it's just kind of what you choose to... how you choose to make it. Someone over here. Maybe this is a report on our group, because we spend a lot of time on a lot of this stuff, especially around gossiping and just some of the things that go into it, especially as a way that it's It's a way of forming a kind of relationship with someone else, that you can get a bunch of people with very disparate views. They may have nothing in common, but they can coalesce around gossiping about someone. There's kind of a social quality to it. We kind of started off talking about

[20:39]

Things like, is it better to tell the truth all the time, or the times in which one should tell a lie, dealing with children around things, the whole issue of bringing in skillful means. and in situations like in work, related things where you need to assess someone else or give a reference. Judy brought up the issue like if somebody uses her as a reference and she doesn't think that much of the person, what does she say to the other person knowing that that other person is going to be dependent on what she says for her well-being? We then started getting into, we spent a lot of time, I guess, in our group on kind of the mucky sort of sides of these issues for ourselves. Is that a fair way of putting it? A good way of putting it?

[21:41]

Yeah. We really kind of looked at it from the perspective of separating ourselves from others. One of the things as far as self-aggrandizement and stuff is, you know, the sense of like, somebody mentioned, I forget who, you know, saying about, well, you know, we do things this way, they don't. There's this way of kind of defining a group or defining something in terms of how you're different from someone else, how you're separated. uh... that lots of times in conflicts uh... there's going to be a way in which you want to portray yourself as being wronged as a kind of form of lying uh... it seemed to be that uh... that number seven uh... which was the uh... praising oneself at the expense of others is one of the tougher ones somebody said that that was definitely their hardest uh...

[22:46]

One of the things that came out of this is a sense of a person saying they felt more secure if someone else was worse. This is sort of bouncing around a little bit. And the point came out that a lot of what we were talking about was sort of like the seeds of war. We were talking about all these little miniature nuclear weapons we were detonating all over the place. And then we got this whole issue of gossiping as a way of people coming together where they may have no other common concerns. And how somehow this gossiping can be like a real social thing. You get together and you have tea and you gossip. And it's a way of cementing something where there may not be anything else. And one of the things about gossiping is that it gets you to form alliances.

[23:53]

It kind of breaks things down. It's like, OK, you're on my side. We're busy gossiping about so-and-so. there is a way of using gossiping as a way of distancing oneself and not to feel what someone else is going through. Someone who may be in a lot of pain and it's too much and so you kind of will maybe put the person down, gossip to others, laugh about it as a way of defending yourself against your own pain. One of the things that came up in some work situations has to do with having to somehow put on a front, maybe always having to be cheerful. And then we got into things of the general category of needing to lie to get by, where the way things are kind of set up in our society, that sometimes you have to misrepresent things or lie,

[24:58]

because certain things that you need. Can you give an example? I'll give an example. For instance, people that are on disability. I mean, we just have to lie through our teeth to keep our benefits, you know, because you can't have this, you can't have that. Most people that work a little bit have to work under the table because if they declared everything, their benefits would get cut more than what they make. And, you know, so there's this whole way that our system is set up to really encourage people to lie. Around attendant care, I think they allow 4.35 an hour. Nobody's going to work for that, so people have to say they need twice as much time as they really need. So there's just kind of those situations that come up for a lot of people And then somebody, Willa brought up being self-employed and having kind of the same situation where she could write off movie tickets and things like that on her, in that same way of just trying to, I call them my survival lies, you know, which is what, I mean, if I told the truth about everything, I would probably end up on the streets.

[26:21]

So, you know, what do you do? Where's that, where's the balance? And people who aren't good at lying end up on the streets. Right. One of the things that came out of that, too, was brought up that the power that someone else has over you, maybe knowing this... Knowing? Knowing. Knowing this. Your lie. Yeah, or just the power that it has over you, the lie that it has over you. Just having to live day to day, knowing. We, at the end, started opening up a thing with sort of, I just put down sort of a thing, the art of pointing out errors. That, you know, how do you phrase things where you need to point something out, and how do you phrase it in a way that's not going to be hurtful, that may be supportive, that's positive, that

[27:33]

It's not something we're all that good at. Kathleen? I wasn't prepared to do it, so it's not too organized, but that was an issue for our group too. How do you deal with errors? And one aspect was, how do you know they're errors? I mean, who determines that? It feels like a very big issue. So there's that. And also in specific, we got into discussion about how to tell the truth of your negative feelings to a friend in ways that do not injure. And that's just another aspect of it. Another thing that came up, we spent time talking about it was humor and exaggeration and sarcasm and other light classics like that seemed to be important to everybody.

[28:40]

If you had a humorous style, how to do it in a way that wasn't defaming and did not put people down and inflate you and also how to resist that if that was your history or background or, you know, in a family situation where everybody was used to jibing and, you know, cutting people down and how to do that without even coming across as pompous or righteous. And the awareness that underneath the sarcasm, if you got separated from it, that it was, you were often in love pain and you felt the pain of the blow. What could you do about that? Also, we talked about the resisting of the temptation to tell lies, and telling lies to get approval, to seem better than you are. the issue of false accusation also came up, and awareness of the feeling of disjunction, the degree to which you feel falsely accused sometimes accents the disjunction between the truth and falsehood that actually exists on so many levels all the time, so that it's not just a sudden thing, you feel falsely accused, but that it's going on all the time, it's just different levels of it.

[30:05]

I don't think I have anything more of anybody in the group has anything. We went round on some of these topics for a long time. Anything more to add? I don't want to add anything, but I want to say it's really amazing the breadth of what was covered. I thought, you know, I always think our group covers everything, and then I hear what the other groups talked about. And it's wonderful how broad and how much depth people get to. Actually, you reminded me of one other thing in that group about when not to use speech. You know, when instead of using it all the time and always finding ways to refine it and to say the right thing, when to keep quiet and use another form of interaction. connecting with someone suffering, not using the speech or speaking as a barrier or a defense or a tool.

[31:14]

I think it would be interesting to consider what would be a... what's the Buddhist version of gossip? You know, what would be a right speech version of gossip that got you the kind of intimacy and social contact that we crave without creating alliances and without drawing lines? I mean, I have no idea. Maybe these groups that we're doing are kind of an example of that. But it's a different kind of fun. I just tried to visualize people getting around together over tea or something and praising someone who wasn't there.

[32:17]

I thought of that too, joy in another person's good fortune. back as a negative thing. And is that still sort of, what value does that have? Is that, again, sort of just another invasion of somebody's privacy in this media sort of way? Yeah, what if People magazine was written that way? Would anyone buy it? Well, not this time, at least, in history. But it's an interesting On one thing, this is really strange, but I think that there's even a negative thing that can arise among people when someone is praised. Because I've heard people praised and felt like a twinge of disappointment that it wasn't me that was being praised.

[33:26]

I mean, you know, so... Yeah, that's really good. It's funny, there's a newspaper, it's called the Amish Productive Budget. I was talking to a bunch of them a year or so ago, and he brought back a copy of this thing. And it's rather interesting. There's a newspaper and stuff, because all it is is chronicles of what people are doing. And there's no kind of analyses, and no this and that. It's just, you know, so-and-so's doing this. It's gossip, but it doesn't have any kind of maliciousness to it at all. It's just, you know, everybody wants to know how different folks are doing. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Oh, OK, I deserve it.

[34:29]

Oh, no, you didn't. One thing that somebody commented on, that business of always ranking, and I mean, I spent all these years as a teacher, and one of these things, you know, you keep seeing these things in the newspaper about, well, the level is such and such, and, you know, has fallen and Berkeley is the 23rd in the state of schools, you know, and their test scores are lower. And all of the test scores that we test kids on from kindergarten on are always in that system where half of everybody is below average. 50% of the kids, by definition, are failures. And there's always, no matter how good they're going to be, 50% are always going to fail.

[35:29]

And 35% are really in trouble. And you know what color and what economic group most of that 34% of those, you know, 35% come from. But we've set that up. We've set it right into our educational system. And we're starting with little tiny kids and telling them where they are in that. And so then when we think about that personally, it's really an interesting thing. And there was one other thing that keeps running through my mind, and that was, you know, There's a whole thing about the Chinese civil service that we look, you know, in the past, you know, the whole Taoist and Confucian civil service thing that was built up in China. And a friend of ours who's a scholar of that period said that 95% of the function of that system was to assign blame. which is a really interesting idea and that kept running through my head and I forgot how to say it.

[36:45]

I think we have to stop and sit for a little bit and talk a little about next week's two precepts. The eighth grade precept is the vow not to be avaricious or greedy. And Bodhidharma's version says, self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the genuine, all-pervading Dharma, not being stingy about a single thing is called the precept of not sparing the Dharma assets. That's not being stingy about a single thing is called the precept of not sparing the dharma assets.

[37:46]

Dogen's version is, one phrase, one verse, that is the 10,000 things and the 100 grasses. One dharma, one realization is all Buddhas and ancestors. Therefore, from the beginning, there has been no stinginess at all. The ninth great precept is the vow not to harbor ill will. Bodhidharma says, self-nature is subtle and mysterious in the realm of the selfless dharma. Not contriving reality for the self is called the precept of not indulging in anger. Yeah, it's hard. In the realm of the selfless dharma, not contriving reality for the self is called the precept of not indulging in anger. It's hard.

[38:47]

And Dogen says, not negative, not positive, neither real nor unreal. There is an ocean of illuminated clouds and an ocean of ornamented clouds. And there's some different readings of that. But I'm not sure we're going to have time to go into it. We can talk about it next week. My reading of the precepts tonight is maybe a little looser than other weeks, because I see them kind of clearly as extensions of some of the earlier precepts, even though each one has its own particularity. And here I may not consider all the three levels that we've been discussing, the literal, the compassionate, and the Buddha nature, but I encourage you to investigate them yourself in those terms to the best that you can. So the eighth precept, the vow not to be avaricious or greedy. Greediness and stinginess are other names for killing life or for taking what is not given.

[39:53]

denying what already belongs to everyone. The precept of not being avaricious literally means that one has no claim on anything. In this world, in a world that runs on an engine of interdependence and dependent co-origination, emotion that is constant. Even what we consider ourselves belongs to all beings and is shared by everyone. So holding tight to our money and our thoughts and our possessions is like trying to get a grip on a flowing stream. If we grab for it, the waters will just slip through our fingers. And if we carefully make a vessel with our hands, sort of like the mudra that we hold in zazen, we can hold just a little bit of it for a small amount of time, maybe just long enough to have a refreshing drink.

[41:06]

It's a good idea. But by habit, most of us hold tightly to our material positions, even when we see so many people in need around us. Bodhidharma said, not being stingy about a single thing is called the precept of not sparing the dharma assets. So, the question for myself is, how can I walk by a dozen homeless people on a single block on the east side of Telegraph Avenue without breaking my stride to meet an outstretched hand. And sometimes I do that. I think there's a lot of fear there. I think I'm afraid if I look too closely, I might see myself in that position, which is frightening. Or I might fear that the whole problem is so big and so hopeless

[42:09]

that a bit of spare change that I may have to offer is pointless. And not only is it pointless, just by giving a bit of spare change, I'm still being stingy, so I may as well walk by. And there's also the fear of just kind of drowning in this great tidal wave of suffering. So I build these kind of seawalls out of habit to create a concept of me and you, or self and other. And that enables me to kind of close my eyes and walk on sometimes. I'm not advocating that. I'm just stating a problem that I haven't gotten to the root of, and I'd very much like to hear what other people have to say about this next week.

[43:13]

But we can be stinchy with the Dharma also. Dogen Zenji writes, one phrase, one verse, that is the ten thousand things and the one hundred grasses. The 10,000 things are the 10,000 dharmas, those boundless dharma gates that we're always vowing to enter and to bring everyone else along with us. Just with one appropriate word, which costs us no effort, or one verse, sometimes we can help a person realize his or her own Buddha nature. or alternately they can help us. The 100 grasses are these just like grass just kind of grows up. I noticed that the mud field out there is beginning to be about as thickly grassed as it was before we plowed it up.

[44:19]

These grasses or these delusions just grow and they are they are these inexhaustible delusions that we're vowing to do away with. And yet they're also inseparably bound up with our everyday life and with enlightenment itself. So one phrase or one verse can likewise help someone see the true condition of their life or my life, which is that delusion and enlightenment are dancing hand in hand. This kind of brings me back to talking about what is this Buddhist gossip that we were talking about. Maybe Buddhist gossip is discussing the Dharma, which sometimes we do a lot of and sometimes we don't do very much of.

[45:27]

Sometimes it's kind of embarrassing because we don't think we know enough about it to really talk about the Dharma. I think it's good for us to do it. I think we have sanctioned gossip, I think, on Mondays when it's open discussion. Right, right. And I think you probably have it in the Monday night group as well. Oh yeah. And I think we can encourage it more and more. I think like the koans, as you read the koans, to me a lot of the koans are, you know, they're gossip. Somebody heard this story and they're just like this bunch of old people, you know, actually telling jokes on each other for the purpose of bringing forth the Dharma. So, in that sense, one phrase or one verse is both the 10,000 things and the 100 grasses and we should practice that. I like what Akin Roshi says. He says, the bounty of the phenomenal world is matched by the bounteous spirit of the individual.

[46:33]

And actually, in the zendo, we express this in many ways. Just think of how we serve food or tea to each other, or how in service we offer the merit of our zazen and chanting for the benefit of all beings. And in fact, just sitting with each other in the morning and the afternoon, It's a great act of dana, of generosity, giving to each other, which is kind of the compassionate aspect of this precept to avoid stinginess. In that light, I also like Yamada Roshi's comment in Mind of Clover that If we bow, he says that's the act of throwing everything away, as well as the act of raising the Buddha's feet. It's bowing, we're just throwing everything away. Not so much bowing to something, but getting rid of what we don't need.

[47:40]

So finally, we acknowledge the Buddha mind version of this precept. And since there is no you or no me, all things and all ideas and all thoughts belong to each other and to no one in particular. And again, this is the essence of dependent co-origination that Ross was alluding to. is a great discovery. And with this Buddha mind precept, our mind of enlightenment can just say, easy come and easy go. We don't hold on to anything. Turning to the ninth precept, vow not to harbor ill will. If you're ever giving a talk in the Zendo, are anxious about how to get a good discussion going. You just talk about anger and it will.

[48:46]

It's sort of a surefire topic. But to be clear, following this precept doesn't mean that I or you won't get angry. And if I do, or actually when I get angry, uh... the precept is not advising us to stuff the anger away someplace where it will doubtless leak out directly or indirectly uh... in uh... invariably some inappropriate way uh... that's actually stuffing it away is actually harboring ill will so the suggestion here is that we have a choice about what we do with our anger not that it won't come up. So Bodhisattva, which we all are, uses anger in several ways. First of all, it's a tool for understanding ourselves.

[49:47]

It's very nice to have a calm mind and a very smooth life with no ups and downs. And if there's anybody here who has that, maybe they can tell me how they do it. The practice still is a practice of regulating your life, and regulating your life doesn't mean just bulldozing the hills or paving over the rough spots. It actually means practicing very hard with whatever comes your way, including anger, ill will, all of these feelings that we've been talking about over the weeks. And in fact, taking it even further, even being grateful to an adversary or a so-called enemy who compels you to take a hard look at yourself.

[50:49]

If you read some of the works of the Dalai Lama, again and again he makes the point that In fact, Tibetan culture might not be as strong as it is if it weren't for the clear adversary and the clear oppression of the Chinese. So that the strength of Tibetan culture today is, while the suffering is terrible, there's a strength there, a core strength that comes from having to face that oppression. And there's some degree of gratitude towards the enemy, while at the same time not just giving over one's power. And Akin Roshi quotes a Korean Zen master, San Sanim, who says, the one who praises you is a thief, and the one who criticizes you is your true friend. Another Bodhisattvic aspect of anger is Manjushri's sword, or the compassionate

[51:57]

ferocity of a figure like Fudo Myo, who's a guardian, sort of a flip side of Avalokiteshvara, a guardian of the true Dharma and a guardian of compassion. And each of them uses anger to protect life and to cut us off very cleanly from attachments to ourselves. I'm sure, this is true for you, there are some important lessons I probably never would have learned if it wasn't for the razor-sharp words of a parent or a teacher. At the time they hurt, but actually those kinds of things can heal without a scar. Most of us know about this. Parents certainly know about it. sometimes I have to use a harsh word with Sylvie and she's very sensitive and she bursts out crying but I have to do it to protect her but at the same time I have to be really careful when I do it to make sure I know what skillful means and what is just an expression of a harbored ill will or a harbored hurt an expression of something that may have been done to me

[53:23]

years and years ago that, to go back, had been stuffed and is leaking out in some way. So sometimes when I'm doing that, I actually hear my own parents' or my grandparents' voices, and I really have to stop and think about what's the true motivation here. Laurie and I talk about this a lot. For me, harboring ill will has kind of a feeling of addiction. We know that anger hurts, but like we were talking about with speech this evening, whatever time of day it is, it's all one to me. It's all kind of a blur. We know that anger hurts, but we also sometimes like the charge of it. Some of us We crave exciting lives and we savor our strong emotions just for that excitement.

[54:28]

And this is true for me. For many years, I honestly thought that if I relinquished my anger, that was kind of a mark of who I was. I would be less myself. And I was kind of reluctant to give it up. In the long run, Actually, I found that to be true. I haven't completely given it up, but I found it to be true that I'm less that self. And it's kind of a relief, actually. Because giving up kind of an attachment or a savoring of anger is, well, I was afraid I would be kind of a non-person. And I don't think that's quite what's happened. So this habit of harboring ill will can run really deep. It's embarrassing to say, actually, last night as I was writing down these notes, I had a minor blow-up with Lori over something really small and stupid.

[55:40]

I will spare you the details. But she went out and she came back about an hour or so later. She had kind of let it go. She went out and did something. Meanwhile, I had just sort of sat there and stood about it. You know, even though I could rationally understand that there was no real basis for staying angry. And when she came in, I felt myself kind of armored against her. And we had to talk about that and had to do something to let it down. But that's a real old habit for me. And I guess it's a habit that used to be one of what I viewed as self-preservation, but it doesn't serve me so well right now. So we have to look at these habits. Can I ask a question? Yeah. You seem to put ill-welfare almost identically with anger.

[56:45]

well it's a nurse yeah I was I was there is and I I'm kind of getting to it I'm close to the end here folks the text of the of the Brahma net sutra and it broadens out this scope of this precept a little bit it the language there prohibits deliberate hatefulness and the refusal to accept repentance which actually helps me understand something I hadn't quite gotten before Instead, as anger arises, or dislike arises naturally, but it becomes the violation of ill will when we indulge that taste that we have for it, when we like to think ill of someone, we like to build on the anger, and stored away for use later. That's kind of the way I see it.

[57:54]

We can talk about this next week. There might be some subtlety I'm missing. And I think that in ill will, as Greg was saying, we could think of somebody in a sort of fixed way and deny him or her any possibility of change. And then this violation becomes even worse, and this is where the Sutra broadens it out. Violation becomes worse if we refuse to accept another person's sincere apology or repentance. And that's something that we don't get in our text, but it's there in the original text. And that reminds me that not refusing Well, not refusing repentance reminds me that we're back in the realm of relationship. We're not just back in the realm, we're not just in the realm of what's coming up in me, but actually what's between us.

[58:58]

That this notion of relationship among all beings is where all these precepts are rooted. And I think that this sort of subtle turn towards mutual responsibility is what I had missed in my previous reading of this. So I'm just going to go back. Two weeks ago I quoted from the other Mahayana Sutra, the Definitive Vinaya, and I'll remind you of these words just to end. 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. A bodhisattva should not be afraid of the passions which can help him or her hold sentient beings in embrace, but one should fear the passions which can cause one to forsake sentient beings."

[60:01]

And I think that's werewolf. close for tonight. I'll leave you to think of the questions. Thank you.

[60:13]

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