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Student: Yes, Brian, I have a question about the, what seemed to be two different presentations on karma that one from the, my produce teachings is that you perform an action and plants, a seed, and that seed stays with you until some point in the future when it ripens. And that every action you do is like that.
And then there seems to be a different stents in rich because you don't give that presentation. The seems to be another sense in which that a calmer is more the, in that moment, you are creating forcing conditions. So the action you do is create inclusion traditions in that moment for an infinite variety of possibilities.
The comma, that one individual dots, that's not the potential karma. That's a dial like everything is available. And that the actions that you do, the karma that you do is merely creating, causing conditions for that to for that infinite potential possibility to come. So then karma is only really the actions that you do are really just creating, causing conditions.
In that moment. In that moment, you could experience that rather than the other way round, which is that the individual is responsible for creating the potential that could come in the future rather than the potential already being there in the vast array of all beings, not being separate. Therefore everybody's commerce the same.
Culadasa: Okay, let me clarify that. Cause that's now I need to re repeat this verse for the recorder, for the benefit of those sitting behind you, your equipment here to start. First of all, you said that the way that you had previously been taught or the meaning of karma as you've been taught was that every action you perform planted a seed, which would produce results at some time in the future.
And was does that capture it or is, are contained within an individual V this is completely, I agree with the fact completely where it comes to being misinterpreted is, has to do with the understanding of the nature of the individual. And the relative permanence of the individual for those who need them the most fundamental he I gave a lecture once at a university that really senators in California on the crux of a Buddhist philosophy and the crack suit, Buddhist philosophy really is the doctrine of no self or the emptiness of the idea of the individual self that we are attached to.
And that is really more than anything else. What defines Buddhism and sets it apart from all other metaphysical and philosophical systems that were familiar. But.
For those who cannot grasp it, they, I assume that there is some sort of that the individual or the self, which has inherent within it, the idea of a separate nurse, a divided and us and a boundary. But that self is I sorted self existent and lasting entity rather than being that very separation and selfhood advancing a projection of the mind for those who, and it is very difficult to understand and get beyond the attachment to the idea of individual self.
And especially because we. We have such a strong self and the mind fears, its own eventual destruction and demise. We've got very attached to the idea that some way in which this individual self can continue after death. And so we're very much predisposed to try to interpret absolutely anything, everything in such a way that allows us to claim to the notion that the separate self somehow persists in its separateness and with a maintains an identity.
If you take the teaching that you just described and which I totally agree with, it's absolutely true within the context of what the individual actually is, but people want to take this beyond what actually constitutes the individual and then. They deviate from the teaching of the Buddha and enough weight, they are then positing that the separate and individual cell, his son, something other than the body and mind that makes the, obviously makes up the individual.
And that selfhood has a continuous existence, separate from it has yes, an existence separate from the body and the month. And this is exactly counter to what the Buddhists taught. His second teaching was pointing out that there is no self and the five aggregates, which are the body and the mind and which attempt, and I think fairly successfully to.
To define and encompass all that we can possibly identify and point to and say, this is what makes us up as an individual. They aspect of that teaching it's not necessarily totally clear in that second teaching is he was saying over and over again, the individual, the true nature of the individual, the true nature of the self as we experienced it in this reality in our lives is this body and this mind and the attempt by the mind to add something to that and say that there is some sort of metaphysical entity that maintains its identity and its continuity distinct and separate from the body and mind th there is such a thing, and this is something that.
Our minds like to do. As a matter of fact, our minds take this body and mind that we experienced in the present moment, your body and mind your body and mind, they are real. They are genuine. They, the mind makes them, forms them into a self and disregards. The fact that this body and mind is continuously changing, that it's made up of many different parts that
that it's very separate us is an illusion because we are completely interconnected. This is another really fundamental aspect of the Buddhist teaching is if ultimate interconnectedness of absolutely every time, but our minds overlook that and disregard and construct a boundary. Based on body and mind to make them more separate than they really are.
And then when our mind projected to the future that this body will descend a great, including this brain and includes any including the mind, which is how the brain perceives itself, once the projected into something that's separate from this, so that it won't cease to exist today at the end of the life.
And then the doctrine of karma is applied to that in such a way so that there is a separate entity that is going to receive the results of that. So we'd back up from that and unless three examine the original statement if we take that original statement, recognizing first of all, that there is no separate.
And that the separateness that we attribute to this body and mind are an illusion to begin with that everything is absolutely interconnected. So we keep that in the mind and we keep in mind also that the basis upon which the mind causes us to feel and create a construct around this separateness is the basis for that is the material body and the manifestation of mine, uniquely linked to a particular body that there is a continuity there.
Now, what karma is saying is really that the apparent continuity of the individual is in fact karma it's because we're constantly changing. And not everything about us changes at once. We don't snap out of existence and then count into existence and export moment, different sex, different height, different intelligence level, and may get different handball or something like that.
But rather there's all these parts of us that span this moment on the one after another moment in between certain aspects of it has changed. So we're continuously changing and being transformed the basis of that continuous trains and transformation that we undergo. On the one hand, there is a physical component.
We we interact with other, our physical body interacts with other material objects and it has its own level of causality. You you drop something on your toe and it damages the tissues there and so forth. This is the biological level. The biological nature of our bodies is that they change over time. And particularly as we will age and die our genes to turn on a lot of things that will happen in our bodies. And also our genes determine certain things about the way that our minds manifest and the way we operate and experience in that way.
Oh, there's a biological level of causality. Third is the mind and the your mind is already your mind and any given. Is already structured programs, predisposed to act and react and in certain ways, and that's determined by that's actually determined by both the physical and biological levels, but primarily it's determined by the thoughts and words and actions and the interpretations that you've put on them in the past, by your cumulative experience for as long as his body and mind has been in existence.
And that corresponds to the fourth level of causality, which is karma, it is our nature as opposed to the kind of nature that we would see, for example, yeah, a tree or a rock, is that we have mines. We function in a particular way that. We create who we are in the future to our, through all of the mental processes that we take place.
And those mental processes lead to our words, into our actions. And so the, our future is a product of all of these are the intentions underlying our thoughts and our words, and our actions play their role in condition and our mind. So the mind that we call ours and we attribute to accurately, so it was a part of the individual.
This is going to be tomorrow next month, the next year, the product of what we do now and the product of what we do in the next moment and the next moment. And then the next moment, and that, that is karma conditioning. The mind, the words we speak have effects. They have effects on other minds. And that comes back to us in many ways.
And the actions we perform have effects on other minds and on physical circumstances, which come back to us in many kinds of ways, because of this total interconnectedness that we, as an individual are everything we think and everything we say and everything we do has a, it conditions us in what you might call internally in the sense of our mind.
And it affects the kinds of circumstances this body, and this mind are gonna find themselves down, later today and tomorrow and next year and so on and so forth. And this is the continuous property not process. So this is completely consistent. The statements, the description of karma you made earlier, would you agree?
Yes, that's totally consistent right now. If we, what some people have done is they've taken that. And rather than understanding it in quite the terms I've just described here, they attribute some supernatural or mystical power, which dictates that everything that you're going to happen in this is going to happen to you in the future is somehow determined by your past actions on a sort of one-to-one relationship.
So you punch somebody, you get punched, things like that. And this is a very simple and easy way to understand things, but yeah. I just asked you to decide for yourself how well it corresponds to experience it doesn't seem right. Yeah. But nevertheless, it's completely consistent with with the teachings of karma that houses everything that we do, but it is recognizing that we are interconnected with absolutely everything.
And so we can't really avoid external constant messages coming back to us. And it's also recognizing that our nature is a constantly changing type and that we are essentially self-creating. So we can't avoid the consequences of our karmic actions on ourselves. And what the Buddha has expressed is very clearly he was asked, by someone, does that mean that everything that happens to you is a result of your karma and can you, do you remember the name of that Sutra and
what's that? Yeah, that's right. yes. Good job. Anyway, he asked the Buddhist, I was just every single thing that happened to his eye. Was that what ? And he said, no, that's nonsense. He says everything that you experience, this is a subtle, but hugely important difference here, because the same, exactly the same circumstances can be fall to different people and their experience of it can be totally different.
So for example, if I'm experiencing you yeah. Then your actions, the result of your actions could be experienced in this. Because I'm experiencing you. Yes. You're experiencing it. That's right for the eye. If you do something. So for example, for you to have some spiritual experience, then the result of that could actually open right here on this one.
Yes. There is a sense in which it could pass, right? Yeah. The same as if, If if I get angry and hit you, you will experience the pain and the injury of the things truck. And if I have a spiritual experience and I choose to try to share that with you or guide you, then you are experiencing the fruit of that of that passion as well.
Now, how you experienced it is determined by your nature because a Buddha could come in the room and give a profound truth to every one of us. And some might hear it and some might not. And that's their karma. So there is this interaction and that's because we are interdependent and if we'd began to realize it, okay, what does this mean?
Then? If our individuality is transient and largely based. On illusion. If our individuality is a convenient fiction of the mind that overlooks a deeper underlying reality, what par what are the implications of that? Let's investigate that by going to another way in which your original description of karma is often interpreted, but some mysteriously difficult to identify immaterial entity.
That is who I really am, will continue in another vein after my gift and will inherit all of this conditioning and karma. And once again, if you resort to some supernatural or mystical property of reality, that doles. Carmen consequences then then you can imagine that if this immaterial entity exists and reappears in a different forum, like putting on a different suit of clothes that this mysterious process could assign to it all kinds of appropriate consequences.
So you say, okay, if I'm born in a slum of abusive parents, that must be because this same individual in a previous incarnation perform certain actions that this is the just, and a appropriate consequence,
but that's still presuming this separate identity and his continuing separate identity. If we see that we're all interconnect. What does that mean? The sense of I miss that this being born in the, and the slum, what the abuse of parents experiences is indistinguishable from that sense of Highness that any of us have, it's a product of the mine.
So if they have a human mind, they will have a sense of being high and distinguishable from many of the rest of our sense of being high. And they'll look into circumstances and they'll separate that and say, what did I do to deserve this? Why me, is it possible that someone would be born in those circumstances who would not have one form or another have that thought?
Why me? Yeah. And at a deeper level, it is that conscious experience of what ever circumstances that there, if there is of mind, if there is consciousness, if there is body and mind that this was part of the description that Buddha gave us call called dependent origin nation, he said, we're in his consciousness, his body and mind.
And then he turned around the other way. So whether there's body and mind there's consciousness, they said these two, always turn it back on each other. So where there is this kind of living body and mind, there will be this consciousness of experience, but circumstances this experience, it includes the experience of selfhood of I know everything else and it is inevitable and universal.
So if we're not really separate. The only way that this person could be born in a slum is that other beings indistinguishable from himself at that level created the slop. And even those abusive parents and perhaps the grandparents that abused them and so forth that caused them to be, and that way, and in every case, they are all at a certain level indistinguishable.
So if we rid ourselves of the idea of separateness and the app sameness, the separate and us, and the continuity that we would like to acclaim to, we can understand that all of these causalities, that we speak out really, they don't belong to an imaginary separate south. They belong to the totality, that one best.
And so indeed everything that we do will be visited upon us because we are not different from any of the individuals who will experience the consequences of that and everything that we experienced that seems to from outside and someone else is really, it's only an illusion that the Dewar of that is someone other than ourselves.
And if 10 people are responsible for creating the circumstances, it's not that I'm the one in the middle number five that you know, but rather we're all equally indistinguishable at a particular law. It could be the case. So for example there's a whole lot of people going in retreat at diamond mountain.
That's my experience. I'm aware of that current to happen. Yeah. It's totally possible that the results of that, those actions
I'm going to experience this one is going to experience the result of that action. That's my experience. And also the actions that this one has done such as stealing then it could be that somebody else that I know in my experience, I experienced somebody else having poverty. So in both cases, it's, it is my experience.
But the individual, like I seem to be gaining the potential for gaining all the virtue that those people are trying to generate in retreat. And I'm kinda like separate from. Caffeine to experience through publicly resulted steering
so
Student: long as you can enjoy the illusion of being separate. And we know this scenario is people that engage in tremendous acts of evil and and seemingly as a result of those evil acts, they enjoy great sexual pleasure and wealth and all kinds of other things.
And they live long lives and have families. And you look at that and say but delusion is that they are separate from those who have experienced the consequences of their evil, that we didn't that lifetime worth. Yes. Within any life. Now here's where. It does get even more magical and mystical than the idea that there's fun, buddy, keeping store score and dealing out karma to a mysterious non-material entity that puts on bodies and take some off again, like Halloween costumes.
And that's that the nature of the alternate is not divisible. Their relative is a losery and the nature of the alternate is one. Sometimes the ultimate is identified has God not the God who. Has a beard looks like a human being gets jealous, punished as this person, rewards that line. But rather the ultimate sense, the source of all things. Now, the ultimate and that ultimate nature, we all, as these losery individuals partake of that ultimate nature, we are an it, and it is in us, which means that everyone is in me and I am in everyone, out at a particular, in a particular sense.
And I may ignorantly fail to realize that. And so I, as this person may do things that cause suffering to others while I, as those other persons will say, why is this terrible thing happening to me? Not recognizing that this is all. That it is the actual separateness and distinctness. That is the illusion.
Nobody will disagree that somebody who's been evil all their life and seems to have lived a very satisfying life file or ordinary criteria, and then perhaps dies and an easy death. Then the say, say that person felt like they weren't enjoying all these benefits that they definitely did not observe that deserve.
And that's absolutely true from the perspective, from those perspective, inside of thinking that we are the separate individual, but we think we are, and that doesn't change no matter what philosophy and what metaphysics you apply to it. But if. Yeah. On the one hand, when we go back again to the Buddhist teaching, the Buddha said there are those who believe that I am a separate self and the self is annihilated at death.
And he said, that's not correct. And there are those who believe that I am a separate self. The separate self is eternal and that's not true. Are there is both of these are wrong views because it, based on the idea that the separate S the separate selfhood is her reality at all. So the truth is that, yeah, we're all in each other and everything is in us.
And so we are indeed the experiencer of our actions that victimize somebody else every bit, as much as we are the experience of the person who appears to reward to be rewarded by those evil lies.
So that's the sense in which those teachings stated as you did very clearly, those are the teachings of the Buddha on karma, but there are different interpretations of that. There was one aspect of this that I didn't go into. We know how we're interconnected materially, even if from our limited vantage point, it seems not terribly relevant, but we do understand the nature of our material connections.
We weave. If we reflect on it, can see how we are interconnected mentally through the agency of matter. We communicate by words, we handed her act. We we share experiences. And really what you are, if you honestly examine it is hugely to be determined by all kinds of other people. V billions of other people.
Your ancestor, 200,000 years ago had contact with very few people. There was not there was not writing what could be transmitted culturally was fairly limited, but even there, they were influenced by many other human beings who had lived before. But you and I look at how totally, how we are conditioned by all of the other people in the world and all the contacts that we have, all the things that you learned in school that came from other people that you never experienced and your teacher never experienced, but nevertheless, they become a part of your reality.
We are mentally interconnected through the agency of the physical. Now we do make this distinction between the physical and the mental. And it seems to us as though the mental aspect of our existence is somehow isolated and closed and separate. And that other than through physical agency, unless you tell me, I'll never know what's on your mind, that's the way it seems to us.
That's the way it feels to us. If we look at everything else. How about the world? We might actually conclude about that as well. That seems rather odd. If everything else has started totally interconnected, why would it be this one aspect would not share in that interconnectedness? And if we look, we will find that children and sometimes other people will acquire somehow memories of the experiences of other individuals other than themselves.
How does that happen? I had somebody here two weeks ago, seating where Terry is right now, who woke up one night and was able to perform very sophisticated martial arts kind of food and he never studied or even thought about that before I knew his life, but I was suddenly transferred to him.
How does something like that happen? People have dreams or other experiences by which they seem to know what's taking some place somewhere else or the thoughts and attention and serve other people. We can do one of two things with these things as we could write them all off as tricks of the imagination, say that the isolated separate mind that we seem to think we are, can come up with these things.
It's just a as tricks. Or we could say maybe indeed at the mental level we are not really as separate as we seem to believe that we are.
When we accept that we may not be as separate as we seem to believe we are. If we entertain that as a possibility or other, the other consequences of that, the person lives. I very dedicated spiritual life. They do good deeds. They practice sincerely some form of religious practice. They they cultivate various aspects of wisdom that go beyond just simple information and attachment to the world.
What we consider your spiritual wisdom. They have refined their personalities in terms of generosity, compassion, love, and kindness, respect all of these other good qualities. Now what happens when. Person dies. There's all of that is all of that. Just gone in a flash as it's, as if it never happened, except for maybe their memories of the minds of certain people that he or she with, but they're buying St lay-person.
But other than that, is it all gone? The nice thing, if you at least consider the possibility that at the mental level we are as interconnected as we are at all of these other levels. So we obviously see we are, then all of that wholesomeness that has been cultivated is not lost. It becomes a part, it remains a part shouldn't say to townsie remains are part of the wholeness of the holistic nature of the ultimate that it always was.
And it will manage that. Hi, look at what we know of the history of the documentaries. And I see the amazing advances that have been made over the last couple of thousand years and our ideas of how people should treat each other and what is right and wrong. And we've made a lot of progress. And how does this come about now?
I feel like all of the spiritual practice and all of the spiritual work that anybody does serves, serves the whole, but was talking about, he becomes a Saint that's. He here becomes an enlightened being to a greater or lesser degree. This is going to have some influence on all of the rest of the beings.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that somebody can't be born. And there's something about all of the different circumstances that come together that make that mind and that body, a suitable vessel to basically tune in to the wisdom and the spiritual training that another person has developed.
Now, that doesn't mean that this person is a reincarnation of that one, that some mysterious material element has put on a new suit of clothes there. And somehow not only that, but it's managed to carry along with it all of these other things, but rather if those exist and are there, they tend to go together.
These different qualities that a saintly person has, are inter mashed and interact. They don't fall apart into totally separate elements. They stay together. And so if another beam, if the conditions are appropriate, why would those not come together to and in a somewhat unified way, but they wouldn't necessarily do that.
And I wouldn't be necessarily limited to that. The actual nature of how this goes. I don't know. It's very interesting. And this was what, this is my big thing that I'm interested in right now, exploring the mind to mind connection. That's my next great adventure dabbled a little bit in. And and they past lives review and found that very interesting and instructor.
And now I'm looking at dreams because I'd been watching my dreams and, There is content for dreams that I am certain must belong to the experience of other individuals who are affected this individual. I'm quite strict with them. And I think it may be that every single night, when we go to sleep, part of those barriers that separate this seemingly separate individual mind mind necessar, Holt become weak and gap for peer at openings or for him.
And so I'm hoping that by exploring that I may come to understand a little bit more how the nature of this mind to mind connection happens. Maybe if I understand it well enough that.
That would solve one of my big problems. Why am I doing problems? Is that often people don't understand what I'm saying, how to do my desperate smile yet. And if I could only know if I can only connect more, if this mind can only connect more indirectly with other minds, then I know just exactly how to put things so that when I say something one way somebody has
Wouldn't that be wonderful. I'm really, that's what I want to be doing.
I guess I wouldn't be on your original question,
but back to your original question I really appreciate your feedback and plot for reactions to that explanation, it feels. What was seemingly two separate presentations of calming and mesh together simply by saying that it's the experience rather than the action. Yeah. So when you say it's the experience Robert reaction, then I'm free from what this, if this individual does this individual experience, the result, which is simplistic, it doesn't work out or the opposite where this individual doesn't have to do anything that can get any amount of Carmen from the cosmic world.
So if you say it's experience, so then what this individual experiences allows, all of that potential con, even if this individual didn't want. The physical body didn't do anything. If you'd experienced with something even through thought or seeing somebody else doing it or knowing somebody else's doing it then all about is that commerce, which is available to ride them in the experience of the individual.
So he either asked somebody else getting that resolved, whereas this individual caring realism. So then those two are meshed in that word that they still, they do work out that way. So everything I do to this individual does is worthwhile. Cause it could be that it ripens read this one, cause it is the experience of this one, but it might not do.
And so it still doesn't negate, but the purpose of continue on a path, even if this one, this individual doesn't clip in result, then on may experience somebody else getting. Or there will be an experience in the future that we need to know to restart. Then in those two, two presentations mesh simply by deadline with tracks, not action, but experience that's, I'm really glad you said that because actually that was one of the teachings when I encountered it was I found it extremely revealing.
Is that, yeah. It's not what happens to you. That's your current, I guess how you experience, what happens to me?
Thank you for that question.
And does anyone else have any questions or comments on what we talked about or does it resonate at all or, yes, I'm curious as to how. Desire enters in on this experience of total detachment, as well as understanding the union room desire. Yeah. Yeah. You're wondering how desire shifts in with desire or yearning desire yearning fits and to this description and terms of, you said attachment, I assume you mean the separation aspect and the wholeness the way you would, if it's in, is that if you examine what is the nature of desire and wanting to we experienced desire and we experienced design.
Th the exp desire is based in this idea of being separate individual. We see that it, can you see that it arises in that eye with the preset position, that there is a separate self. I am there arises at desire to procure enjoyments and satisfactions for the benefit of this cell and to avoid causes of pain and happiness for this cell.
So this desire becomes this operating principle, there's self and there's everything that's not cell. And where I come from that is trying to manipulate the interaction between self and not self. So that I received the rewards that gratify yourself. I avoid the suffering that this self, which isn't wish he was not very experienced.
And it's a small step from there to being a, being willing to satisfy those needs at the expense of your beings like myself, because this self is separate from those selves and as this separate self, but I'm looking out for, so if I win and you lose that's too bad for you. So this is where if the desire is if the desire is for wholeness than that, that is, it arises from the same place, but it's a much more wholesome desire.
It comes with a desire for home. Comes from the sense of separate enough. And from you see, we have within us inherently something that we may mask or we on may unmasked and the course of the way we condition ourselves. But we have inherently something within us, which senses and seeks wholeness and which, compassionate arises through seeing ourselves and others that are spelled.
And so all of those things that we regard as noble are coming from one, something that is there and, all of us and a manifestation of that is when one who still regards themselves as a separate cell yearns for oh, Or desires to do things for the benefit of others or who wants to alleviate the suffering of others or who senses that undoing the skin.
We're all the same. These are all coming from something. We are, after all our separateness is an illusion. We are ultimately we are to that ultimate truth, which is full and which is one, which is the divine source. That is what we are. Ultimately, I believe that's what the meaning is that you say that the divine exists in each of us.
When we think of the of the Godhead, you have those terms. Then what we are seeking to do as perceiving ourselves as the separate suffering individuals is to seek for the return to the God that they're the source then through the origin. But we experienced that as a yearning, as a desire from the context of perceiving ourselves as separate and longing for the return and longing for a whole, all emotion is really a perception of separate news.
All emotion is a manifestation of separateness of emotion is approved. Emotions are programs of the brain and the brain is where this sense of separateness gets created. And it's it's an evolutionary necessity. The is-ness the sexiness has led to beings like ourselves by a long process that has involved the manipulation of selfhood to make this possible from single celled organisms who separated themselves from the rest of the world, by the membrane to colonial groups and multicellular organisms, and more and more sophisticated.
But in all of this, who's a pattern of this identification out a cell, and then acting to fulfill the needs of the self and prevent harm to the cell. So even this illusion of selfhood that we want to see to beyond
manifestation of the. That makes possible what we are
the weekend we to beat human beings are such a special and unique thing because as far as we can tell, there's no other creatures that have this opportunity to go beyond this condition, nature, which creates this powerful illusion that serves biological necessity.
But we do have the ability to grow beyond it.
We have the ability to uproot the unwholesome abduction. Or restructure them that they become Holston and their in there, their outcome the same way as they say, emotions are pattern, the reactions programs and the brain and the mind we have physical they have physical counterparts there's programs, pattern, reactions of physical behavior.
And they can be used either for good or for death. So you can the dog's instinct is to bite anything that is Sage, but I can learn about to do that. Can learn to use the same motor patterns to to third of a master and fitter to repins for someone else that our emotions are part of this body-mind individual or.
But we do not with the individual. The guard does not need to be ruled and controlled by these primitive motor patterns,
but they exist to reinforce ourselves and reinforce our survival assets. Separate aquifers. Yeah. So my being Buick conference or motorcycle, killing myself, wondering why we are. Why? Why? Like, why now? Why? Because the human entity has
no, is it, why is it an outgrowth of this business of such moose? Why are they As you were talking, I was thinking about maybe, no, this is very simply put and simplistic, maybe metaphorical. Maybe we are like to finger fingers of business. Maybe we are light via these little emergencies.
There's just the Bryan emergence, Sheila DASA emergence, and like fingers are connected to our, the rest of our bodies, but we're extension we're exploring. And maybe in fact, we are enlarging by our very existence. This isn't a specific experience of suchness. That's a very good way of looking at it. Ha I can't repeat that.
I just wanted to point out that very good ways of looking at it. It's still just ways of looking at it. A very similar, good way of looking at it is why are we are how the universe comes to know itself or to take a note from the catechism we're we are so that we can know and love God, right?
God bang the alternate. These are really good ways of looking at things, but what'd, you have to keep in mind is what's trying to find an answer to the question. Why is the human mind with its limitations? And while we may consider ourselves the the apitomy of intelligent beings and liked to think that we're, we're on the absolute.
Apex or what it's possible to be that's nonsense. No not that long ago, the most intelligent things around very reptiles and they had their way of doing things. And perhaps if perhaps they did or perhaps they might have, and one of them wondered why the sun rises and falls and things are chat and which hand even in management, what kind of explanation mind at that level would have concocted.
But if we imagine that this process, which has clearly been going on now for something of the order of 10 to 20 billion years, and now results with human beings, with a kind of consciousness spiritual aspirations and everything else that we are. We didn't exist in the farm. We are 500,000 years ago and much less than a million years ago.
What happens if this process, which so far seems to have managed to proceed and in spite of all sorts of disasters, like the, the one that wiped out the dinosaurs and things like that, nevertheless has proceeded steadily for 10 to 20 billion years and has produced us if it continues for another million or 50 million or billion years, what kind of conscious sentient beings might there be and how naive and foolish, if they could even conceive of the answers that we generate.
So the question why so your human mind. To taste the answer. You have to suspend the normal, constructive functions of your human mind. And then we have a taste of the answer. And then when we come back into and to the human mind, turns itself back on and starts trying to put this and can comprehensible concept is going to make up a good story.
And that's, I think we're all of our attempts at explaining the way things really are and the way they are, not from the mind's attempt to explain that, which it has a glimpse of, but which is essentially not describable by the mine.
Yeah. Yeah. Asking all these questions because we really basically want to know how. How to win, how to do identity life how to be with other people and how to be with very shame that's around us. It seems to me that we are both there. I think there is one level deeper than that. That is extremely important.
Why did we, why do we feel like we need to know how to live and not other people and things like that? Yes. That's what, that's that divine within us, the Luna nature for what I would call the Buddha nature. Yeah. Because we recognize that how really are, how we think, how we behave, how we interact with others is that is the means by which we achieve for homeless and meditative awareness or are constantly.
Looking at our own minds. It seems the way to me to to deal with our emotions and in our patterns and everything, just to be watching to see how w what it is that we do clean up, we're aware of what it is we do and how we can make it wholesome. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We're trying to understand why we are the way we are and part of the experience things, the way we do and change that for the better than a positive evolution.
That's right.
That's and that's another way that I would put it is that we've essentially reached the end of our biological evolution. Not suggesting that biological evolution itself has had any kind of yet, but we've reached the end, but our biological evolution, the next evolutionary step for human beings is spiritual evolution.
And we are capable of that in a way, but in a very special way. And in any life that is not directed towards that is, is an unfortunate loss. And for that matter, any moment of the lives of any one of us that is not directed towards that is an unfortunate loss because the opportunity is so glorious.
The last for the whole, a loss for the home.
That's what Brian was meaning or that you were talking about.
And then how every thought infection, that word debris that we build affects their whole. So vaccine karmic results for the home. Yes. That comes back to us as part of the whole that's right. Both in this life. And after this license center,
After we note back into it,
it just goes on its way. No.
Okay.
| Added at | Sept. 26, 2020 |
| Recording date | May 2, 2010 |
| Audio length | 0 minutes |
| Original file name | CS-02may10.mp3 |