Before I do, I'd like to pause and reflect concerning the material of last week, having to do with karma and the result of your karma and so forth, and intention. One thing that my diagram and so forth may not have adequately made is the sense that certain kinds of intentions, certain kinds of choices have a very powerful effect on your whole situation, including your past karma. I alluded to that at the very end with the humorous story of David Dock, I think his deathbed repentance, how much that's known, that affected his situation.

[01:11]

The most powerful thought that you can have, at least in Mahayana Buddhism, is the thought of enlightenment, and more and more in Buddhist doctrine it comes to be the most important thing almost. The thought of enlightenment is really very simple, it's just that you have a thought that it's possible to escape or be awakened or be liberated, and the first time that that thought ever occurs to you in your life stream is supposed to be a very dramatic moment, because it sets up the conditions for your future awakening, and for others as well. In early Buddhism that was not, they were much more concerned with the mechanics of

[02:18]

awakening, getting rid of greed, hatred, delusion, practically speaking. The potential power of such a simple thought was not really brought out so much, but the more the dialectics of emptiness and awakening were developed in later Buddhism, the more Consequently, the power or force of a vow for our lineage, for great vehicle teaching, is almost more important than your behavior. You might say early Buddhism was much more involved in the exoteric side of your behavior, how you're actually doing with your defilements and so forth. So to our ears it smacks of a certain puritanical quality, and it also produces a kind of precepts

[03:29]

that are very detailed, what you're doing, what you are and are not doing. Whereas the idea of a vow, or you might say a vow of intention that you make an effort to repeat, you might say is the working definition of a vow. So a vow is like any thought, except you repeat it as often as you can think of it. So a vow may not necessarily be a very strong thought. You may have a fairly weak thought to begin with, like the thought of enlightenment may be very weak, maybe just a fleeting image. But if you repeat that thought, it grows in strength. Or it may be a very strong thought, but if you don't repeat it, it also doesn't function as a vow. So a vow is a thought that you repeat. And karma is also a thought that you repeat.

[04:32]

A visual pattern is nothing more than momentary choices that you repeat over and over again. So a vow is a kind of karma, but it's a karma which is in the direction of liberation or which is in the direction of freedom from karma. So we don't call it karma. Although it functions mechanically the same way, we call it a vow or a merit. So I drew last week this pyramid of karmic mass that you carry with you, and then a point of it being the point of the present moment in which you have some choice.

[05:37]

Hmm. Hmm. Choice. Hmm. Hmm. Choice. And that picture is the same regardless of your spiritual condition. The difference is, for the average person, what you're doing here at this point of the present is very much influenced and determined by your visual patterns. So you're not at all, in a sense, your choice is not at all free. Or it's rather distorted by the repetitive patterns that you've been engaged in for a

[06:52]

long time. Whereas for someone who's been able to free themselves from this after time, there's a kind of space here, a gap in both directions. Not that you're free of it, but you see all of it is substantial, and it allows the purity of your intentions to function without being distorted or dense. You don't, in a sense, escape from it. It's funny that there's a sort of implicit Western idea, maybe it has to do with the Christian idea of resurrection or some kind of celestial existence that doesn't involve the human body, but there's an idea that somehow a spiritually awakened person is some kind

[07:54]

of superman or superwoman, and doesn't get sick or is in complete control of all their functions and so forth. This would be a rather discouraging idea from a Buddhist point of view, in a way, because it would mean that liberation, rather than being the innate function of all human beings, is some kind of athletic event. Kind of like being Muhammad Ali, a few extraordinary people can do it, but the rest of you better forget it. So it's, in a way, a rather narrow idea of awakening, to think that it's some kind of special power that you can gain. Whatever sort of extraordinaryness may accrue to you does not really have much to do with

[08:59]

spiritual practice as much as just some innate talent, like having big muscles or something. Some people have. Some great Zen teachers are rather sickly. A young dog had died in 2003. He was actually one of the shortest-lived great teachers. If you're only 45 or 50, at least you don't get all so famous, especially for the students. But he started so young. He was such a prodigy that at a young age he was enraged sometimes. He'd be quite renowned. But even then, the average age of great teachers in the lineage is about the usual 60s. So they don't live any longer than anybody else. They seem to, on the whole, die rather more...

[10:04]

Many of them sort of just announced they were going to die. They got sick and died. It was a consensus coming from most people. On the whole, they made no particular effort to use some supernormal powers to cure themselves or prolong their lives. There's lots of interesting stories of Zen teachers' demise and stuff. This is sort of a sidetrack. One that comes to mind is Tozan, the To of Soto. He announced he was going to be gone. And he did. Everybody was crying a lot, so he woke up and said, Look, this is ridiculous. Now I'm not going to do this if you're going to make such a fuss. He stuck around for another week or so. He got everybody more prepared, and then he died. Of course, it was the first time he didn't really die.

[11:06]

He was in a coma or a trance or something. But there are also other examples, like Suzuki Roshi and many others, of people who died rather quickly. So, this is just your past karma, mostly of having a body, which, from Buddha's point of view, you chose to do. Coming home and being awakened or becoming Buddha doesn't have much effect on that at all. It's the result of that. You're darkness. And the Buddha's own death is rather ordinary. He ate some poison. Food. Had dysentery. Laid down. Died. So, I'm just using my own physical death as an example. The difference was, of course, he didn't bother at all that much. He accepted it completely.

[12:06]

It didn't affect his state of mind much at all. There was some space around his present existence that gave him some freedom or detachment from that, from everything. So, all of us have this ability, which is actually available to us at any time. But, on a whole, the weight of our, without practice or without some effort to alter the patterns of thinking which we develop, this potentiality to act freely at each moment is not actualized. So, the vow, you might say, to put it another way, is a thought with space around it. It's a thought which mobilizes the full energy of your intention

[13:19]

rather than the average intentional thought is mostly running on borrowed power. So, running on the power of previous cognitive activity. So, it takes its power, it borrows its power from some kind of recreated past which you recreate with the present. And vow is more like a thought which you create fully in the present and keep creating it that way. And these refuges, which is the first three of these sixteen, is that kind of thing. They're more like vows than some kind of statement of belief or membership.

[14:20]

Although it is true that the pre-refuges are what technically make you a Buddhist traditionally. Someone who says this, particularly before others or before the Sangha, they are what you would call Buddhists. So, one of the first things to examine is what exactly is implied by the refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Does it first of all imply some kind of exclusiveness? That by doing so, you limit or somehow give up other possible refuges. As A. K. Roshi says, the word refuge, saranam, means something like protection, shelter, abode, refuge.

[15:21]

And he says, will or chosen resort. I guess maybe like last resort rather than possible resort. What you resort to. For a while, A. K. Roshi was using the phrase, now I return to the Buddha. Now I return to the Dharma. Now we're going back to refuge. Refuge is pretty good, I suppose. I think to understand what it means to take refuge, we have to acknowledge that we take refuge often already, which may not be generally recognized, but already we take refuge in great many things. To really understand what is above taking refuge in the Three Jewels,

[16:31]

one has to at some point, before or after a break, expose what refuges you already have. This may not be so easy to do. I think it's one of the main reasons you sit. And one of the things that I think the first couple of years you sit is a lot involved in is revealing to yourself what you actually take refuge in already. And many of the resistances and problems that come up in the early years of sitting are basically forms of becoming aware of the extent to which you take refuge in things which are not the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha. The core refuge which we would give up in Buddhist practice

[17:37]

is the refuge in what they religiously call recently a prior conception of enduring existence, which is a fancy phrase for what Buddhism calls a Buddha himself or a permanent fixed identity in prior conception of inherent existence. That's the most compelling refuge. Other refuges you might say are karmic refuges, are forms of that, adjuncts to that. One important adjunct, of course, is that we take refuge in our own thoughts, in our own thinking, so that we can actually believe in the reality of our own thoughts. So, for instance, the belief in inherent existence is an example of a repeated thought,

[18:58]

a repeated karmic thought, a habitual thought. It's no longer the level of, you know, as you're going through the day, thinking to yourself, hey, I have a belief in prior conception of inherent existence. You know, it's embodied very deeply in yourself, that kind of thought. So it's not something that's conscious at all. It's simply that your activity is colored by it or is being by it all the time, in various ways. There's a funny story that, this probably is true, I don't know, it's one of these stories that you often, it's kind of a general spiritual teacher story that you find quoted in all these books. Sort of thing that could happen, somebody came to a teacher,

[20:02]

I don't even know if it's a Buddhist story or not, and said, I'd like to study in a way, and the teacher said, good, how badly do you want to do it? And the person said, oh, it's the most important thing in my life. That's all I really want to do. So the teacher stuck his head into a nearby pond and held it down until he practically drowned. And then he came up for air and he asked him what was going on, what was the most important thing at the time. And he had to confess that actually he was very interested in surviving during that time. So you know, in a very simple, direct, rather violent way, the teacher exposed the unconscious thought that of course we all have, that at the very least we want to survive. And of course if we didn't have that thought, to some extent we wouldn't survive.

[21:08]

We'd be like Billy in the Slaughterhouse Spa, and he was in a scene to demonstrate Billy's character, because he's a star. Billy's fantastic degree of captiveness is a scene, a flashback, in which his father says, all right, Billy, you're going to learn how to swim, and throws him into the pool, and he sinks right at the top of the pool. His father's going, Billy! That's us lying there. You know, I think that's what Baker was just trying to bring out, was a sense of higher conception. That it's all right to have some on-the-spot conception of self when it's useful. To be able to survive not running back doors. But to carry it around with you as an inherent quality is the problem. And that's a refuge.

[22:11]

And so to take refuge in the Three Jewels is partly to take a vow to look at or try to reveal what refuge is you already have. And it's not that I don't think... I mean, maybe I'm being overly... making an extra effort to be ecumenical, but I don't think that to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is a kind of statement of a religious belief, which excludes everything else. Maybe you could say it includes... The Three Jewels are pretty broad, and you might say it could include... particularly the second one, the Dharma, could include, I suppose, any Christianity or Judaism. So I think the underlying spirit is...

[23:17]

is of the idea of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is to take refuge in something which is not conditional, which is not part of your personal karmic stream. So it functions psychologically very much in the way a belief in God, for instance, would function. Of course, someone who believes in God, that is to say, you might say someone who believes in a deity, is taking refuge in something not part of their own personal karmic stream. But of course, there's not any explicit God mentioned in the Three Jewels. And the Buddha, take refuge in the Buddha, according to Buddha, the word Buddha

[24:27]

means awake, has participle, bird. It means to be awake. And originally it was a title that was given to anyone who was awake. So the Buddha is the one who is awake. So in its most general sense, it means to take refuge in the possibility of thorough awakening, which was exemplified by the historical Buddha and others who followed. So although it does mean to some extent to take refuge in the historical Buddha, it's part of it. It certainly means to take refuge in Buddha. It means to take refuge in the historical Buddha as an example of Buddhahood, of awakening.

[25:36]

You're taking refuge in the possibility of being a human being, of being a Buddha. I've often been struck, particularly since when I was younger, I studied the European existential philosophy quite a bit. And up to a certain point, you know, it's very Buddhist in the sense that you might say what was exposed by that kind of philosophy is the relativity of all refuges. That actually no refuge that anyone knew about was entirely reliable. And one is actually in a dilemma here. Once you see through the relativity or instantiality of every possible refuge,

[26:43]

whether in ideology or religion or society or family or something. One is left rather in despair and without much hope. So this refuge in Buddha is a leap out of that. And I think what all it gives us the confidence to do it is the reality that it has been done. I think without that, none of us would do it. So I think the proof provided by the continuity of the Sangha and the living practice of generations of good teachers is what gives us the confidence to take this refuge and make it stick and make it work.

[27:49]

I would say of the three, it's in a way the hardest. I think the doubts about the Buddha side are the deepest as well. Dharma and Sangha, I think we can accept more easily. So it means to take refuge in that potential which we all have. I'd like to come back to the more universal side of refuge and the recognition of the Buddha and everyone in a bit. But practically speaking, taking refuge also means, particularly when you take the precepts formally,

[29:04]

that it's from someone who gives them to you. At the very least you're taking refuge in the authority of the person who gives you the precepts, as representing the authority of Buddhism. So traditionally in Buddhist countries, people are given the precepts, or take what's called lay initiation. At some time in their life, or often when they're rather young, it may function somewhat the way confirmation functions in Christianity. That your intention to practice the way of the Buddha is confirmed by receiving the precepts from someone who represents this possibility,

[30:07]

who represents the refuge. Not necessarily your spiritual teacher exactly, or someone you have a close personal relation to, but some teacher, some priest. And often in the far east anyway, these ceremonies would be quite huge. Thousands and thousands of people would all receive these precepts. Usually from some eminence or teacher. And often it would be preceded by a week or two of instruction. Actually something like this, not. Where you'd be instructed in the meaning of the precepts and how to keep them very practical. And also, for the average lay person, some brief experience of meditation and sitting in a temple.

[31:07]

So, for lay people, the experience of receiving the precepts formally in some ceremonies can be a kind of big thing in their life. You can go and do that in a certain form. In the Zen tradition, which emphasizes a relationship with a particular person whom you study, because Zen teaches Buddhism by the apprentice method to your apprentice or to someone, to take refuge in the Buddha extends to that specific kind of relationship in which you create, by your own intention, a relationship of trust with another person.

[32:10]

So, in Zen and other forms of Buddhism, like Tantric Buddhism, which emphasize a teacher, your intention or vow to take refuge in the Buddha creates the teacher for you. This is something that's not generally recognized, but a teacher does not exist in the abstract. So-and-so is a Buddhist teacher. We can say that for convenience, but the actual relationship of teacher and student is created by the student and by the teacher. Primarily by the person. You might say there's a sense of permission, which is granted by the student,

[33:21]

which sets up a relationship of mutual trust. And without that, the relationship doesn't exist. So, in Zen, this is an important aspect of taking refuge in the Buddha, because the role of the teacher is to represent that for you in your life. To represent that possibility for you. It may also be a more informal kind of gesture, in the sense that, like many of you, you're participating in this particular Sangha with this particular teacher,

[34:40]

but you may not have made it specific and personal in the sense that, when we say Sangha and student, the word Sangha means private meeting with the teacher. People often come and ask me, what are the qualifications between the Sangha and student? And I answer in a way that people often feel is a little facetious or something, but it's actually just what it is, which is that the definition of it is that you go to, let's say, a speaker or a student and say, I would like to be a Sangha and student, and he says, yes, that's it. That's all there is to it. There's no other definition. It all happens. Although, I think we don't allow people to apply for members for a few months or so.

[35:44]

So it's actually not any more complicated than this statement, I take refuge in the Buddha. But people may, you know, it may take them years to be able to come to that point, and also they may not say yes to the degree. Particularly since, you know, once the numbers get to a certain point, there has to be some physical limit. Usual Zen teachers traditionally accept about 30, maximum. We have 300. So I don't know what that means exactly. One tenth is spurt, right? So they only take up one tenth of the amount of energy. Anyway, to be a Sangha student, to be someone's student, is a form of this first step.

[36:52]

I wrote down something here, which is more my own thought about taking refuge in the Buddha, which is actually something that is hard for people to acknowledge, but it's the fact that someone could know something. There's actually the possibility that someone could know something. Which I think is, right now, in the present historical situation, is something we doubt. There's this tremendous sense of skepticism, which probably is well-founded, that, well, maybe nobody really knows anything. How do I know that it's possible for somebody to know something? On the other hand, the side-by-side with that certain skepticism, maybe it's, you know, dialectically goes with it, is a sense of somewhat in a hidden extraction, being willing to trust all kinds of things.

[38:10]

New sorts of diets, or medical techniques, or some exercise program, or something, but without much basis. Things run through our culture, society, these days, quite quickly, and it's bad. What is it, spirulina? What is spirulina? What is it? It's Don's Barbecue. Oh, it's Don's. His spirulina is Pat Sane's. They're running neck and neck. No, but it didn't hit the scene until a little recently. No. So, you know, people are willing to invest, you know, take refuge in all kinds of things. You know, rather, it feels almost as though we would very much like to believe that it's possible for someone to know something,

[39:11]

and so on this side, we're kind of acting that way. When anyone asks us directly, we affirm, oh no, we don't think anyone knows anything. We don't trust them. So again, the emphasis here is to make your refuge conscious. Because right in front of you, this is, yes, this is exactly what you're doing. And the effort to make your refuge conscious does inevitably cause you to question the refuges that are already going on in your life. And there is often some degree of inconsistency, shall we say, about all of that. So oftentimes I think people take refuge in someone or something for the sake of the security of taking refuge, but withhold at the same time the key ingredient which makes it work for you, which is the trust that it's possible for someone to know something.

[40:14]

Or its potential to be awakened. So, you might say, to take refuge in something is indeed the emotional need that we all have. Put it that way. That seems to be obvious. Yeah. I just wanted to... maybe take that comment that Jacob wrote, from last week's question and answer where he said that he felt that at any point in his practice he might have decided that if he wrote he would be his teacher, whether or not anything, that he would make an end to his teacher. It wasn't like that. I remember reading in one of these, I think it was maybe Tarquin, one of his books, he says, in Tibet, you know, there actually aren't too many good teachers. But, we treat the teacher as though he's someone great.

[41:21]

We make him a barbarian. We treat him that way. The interesting point here, which is kind of a subtle, almost dangerous point, is that, on one side, you can make use of someone as your teacher, even if they're maybe not so good, not the best teacher. On the other hand, if you take refuge in that person blindly, that's not so good either. Because then, an unscrupulous person can take advantage of you very easily. So the need for refuge is very strong, but at the same time, if, in fact, you're going to take refuge in someone who isn't perfect, you should have that sense of consciousness to take what you said. I'm taking refuge in this person, acknowledging that he or she may be imperfect. And, with some sense of balance,

[42:24]

you can be sceptical at the same time. I think in cultures like Tibetan culture, Indian culture, where there's much more emphasis on a kind of total emotional surrender to the guru, what balances that is not your own personal sense of judgment or perspective or scepticism, but an actual peer system, which sort of roughly figures out who's reputable and who isn't, who's worthy of trust and who isn't. And in most traditional cultures, which have some kind of tradition like that, you have a kind of network of peer relationships, which determine who is going to be acknowledged or allowed to teach who he is.

[43:26]

And if some spiritual leader gets out of line, there are others to sort of help him. So, part of what is lacking at this point in the West is a kind of structure like that. So, we mostly have to rely on our own internal sense of what is authentic and what is not. It's not so well worked out as it may be in the two years. The last point, which I mentioned,

[44:31]

of course, this basic idea that Buddhahood is something which is everyone's possibility, means that to take refuge in the Buddha is about to relate to other people, as though that were self, to relate to each person as a potential Buddha. So, this is a change, practically speaking, from taking refuge in a more limited sense of

[45:35]

just taking care of yourself, or you could take refuge in your own potential but not necessarily in anyone else's. That's a possibility. And the broadest idea of Buddhahood is that it is something that everyone has equal access to. So, this affects your relationships with people. The more you can actualize that sense of seeing each person as on the path, or as someone whose deepest need or desire is to be Buddha. It puts our human relationships in a somewhat different respect.

[46:37]

So, you might say the ten prohibitory precepts which follow are an outcome of the human relationship with the Buddha. In this more fundamental sense that each being, not even human beings, but each being is part of the nature of the living. The implications are very broad. I'm reminded, this is an obvious example, of the way that Native Americans hunted. They had a clear sense when they hunted that they were killing someone very much like themselves.

[47:39]

So, they would apologize, and they would explain, they would explain to the slain creature why they had been killed, and for what reason. The way you would explain to if you decided to kill your friend in order to leave, you would give a lot of respect to your friend, you would explain, look, I'm sorry, I have to leave, but I will make good use of your body, use your sinews from the bumble. They had that sense, of course, they also had a sense, but if they didn't do that, the deer would not participate. The process, they would run away, not be around when they needed them,

[48:41]

so they had a sense that it was some kind of mutual affair, that the deer made themselves available, and the human beings took what was needed. I don't think you should romanticize it too much, I think there were probably lots of selfish, dumb people who did sick work and whatnot, but on the whole, I think their culture much more emphasized a sense of awakened quality of everything, and their relationship to things I think is much more embodied than our society tends to be. So this affects your relationship with other human beings and also other non-human beings. I don't think this class will be much informed for a discussion of rebirth,

[49:42]

reincarnation, but one of the many ways in which one can understand that doctrine is that it expresses the flow or continuity of interconnection in all forms of life, or the interdependence of all forms of life, or one great being of all life. To see life as a whole or as Buddha or as awakened beings is the widest sense of what we mean by this. So I gave a lecture about this last week, and one of the things I found myself saying was that I was sitting

[50:44]

in a pastry and looking out the window just like here, and I saw a tree out there. If you examine the tree closely, you can see a tremendous perfection of it. Intermittently, most of us have that kind of insight that can be refreshed by walks in the woods. But to take refuge in the Buddha means to actually live with that insight and respect continuously, presently, more and more. One of the things that continually amazes me in a way is that with modern science we have

[51:46]

the ability to actually know how totally vast and complex the universe is, yet it doesn't seem to affect our life at all. Whenever I hear about one of these people that thinks the earth is flat, I still hear about some people who think that it's all a plot some sort of communist plot that the earth is round. Actually, I sympathize with them because the world is flat for most people. If you're honest with yourself, you live conveniently as though the earth is flat. Scientists, on the whole, who know these things experientially don't necessarily live any differently. In a way, maybe less so. To shift your perception so that you're living

[52:50]

more like the earth actually is round or that a leaf actually does affect you is a fairly significant shift which I think if you wanted to characterize you or people that come to us as sexist Buddhists I would say that's probably the best way to characterize it is those people who, in their lives, try to make that kind of shift and try to live in accordance with that. It really is a fundamental shift in what the world is. If you talk to somebody who has not made that shift you are not able to connect very well. It's a real difference. Luckily, we live in a very tolerant world.

[53:42]

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