The idea is simple: for every action there is a reaction; for every cause there is an effect; for every effect there is a result, and a new situation is created. Karma can be examined within the structure of an hour, a year, a lifetime, or thousands of lifetimes. The active principle is the same: you, your choices, your decisions, your awareness.

Karma indicates action, not necessarily physical action; nor is Karma a result as a sense of a reward. Some people say when something happens to them, “Oh it’s my karma,” as if there was someone out there giving rewards and punishments. Something good happens to you and you say, “Oh it’s my karma,” meaning that you have good karma, that you’ve done something good in the past and it comes back to you. Something bad happens to you, whatever you consider that to be, and you say “Oh it’s my karma,” meaning that something unpleasant has occurred because you’ve done something that you would consider inappropriate or bad in a prior time. Karma is really much more complicated than that. That’s a very simplistic view of it.

Karma comes from the mind. Karma is engendered by states of mind. For example, if you are in a happy state of mind that would engender one kind of karma. If you are in an unhappy state of mind that would engender another type of karma. It’s best to think of karma, not so much in terms of physical action, but as wave forms of vibratory energy.

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Meditation is the art of breathing-breathing out and breathing in. The universe, which is beyond understanding and description, is always breathing out and breathing in. It breathes in our lives and then it breathes them out. It breathes in dimensions, beings, feelings, understandings, mind itself. It breathes it in and breathes it out. We could say that life is a cycle, but that implies there’s something that is observing it or that’s outside of the cycle. There’s really only breathing. It’s very simple, really.

Meditation is a process in which we’re essentially, at first, breathing out. We’re exhaling. We’re taking all the thoughts, impressions, feelings, vibrations, understandings, all the self-importance, attitudes, desires, loves, hates, passions, dispassions, meanings, lack of meanings, confused states, illumined states, bored states-we’re taking everything-the concept of everything, that which perceives everything, that which is beyond perception, that which is beyond perceiving-everything must go. We’re exhaling existence, taking it out of the mind, and the mind out of the mind.

That’s where water comes in. The beauty of water, is that it neutralizes negative energy and renews you. You can simply jump in the shower and allow the water to cleanse your aura. You are not just cleaning your physical body, but also your body of energy thats surrounds you. You can do this even out in public. If you are in the airport, you will pick up many impressions from people. What you do is you go and splash some water on your face and feel yourself shift.

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Meditation is the art of breathing-breathing out and breathing in. The universe, which is beyond understanding and description, is always breathing out and breathing in. It breathes in our lives and then it breathes them out. It breathes in dimensions, beings, feelings, understandings, mind itself. It breathes it in and breathes it out. We could say that life is a cycle, but that implies there’s something that is observing it or that’s outside of the cycle. There’s really only breathing. It’s very simple, really.

Meditation is a process in which we’re essentially, at first, breathing out. We’re exhaling. We’re taking all the thoughts, impressions, feelings, vibrations, understandings, all the self-importance, attitudes, desires, loves, hates, passions, dispassions, meanings, lack of meanings, confused states, illumined states, bored states-we’re taking everything-the concept of everything, that which perceives everything, that which is beyond perception, that which is beyond perceiving-everything must go. We’re exhaling existence, taking it out of the mind, and the mind out of the mind.

We pick up negative energies from many places. Just by walking around in a mall you pick up impressions from those that are around you. You may like Television, but you also pick up energy from the population that is also watching tv. You may have also woken up, after visiting people or places and picked up energetic impressions there, while you slept. Its always a great idea to remove any negative energy that you pick up, no matter where it came from.

That’s where water comes in. The beauty of water, is that it neutralizes negative energy and renews you. You can simply jump in the shower and allow the water to cleanse your aura. You are not just cleaning your physical body, but also your body of energy thats surrounds you. You can do this even out in public. If you are in the airport, you will pick up many impressions from people. What you do is you go and splash some water on your face and feel yourself shift.

Life is wonder, endless wonder. When you are in a high level of attention you see that. Naturally, if your energy level is low, then everything is gray, two dimensional, boring, frustrating, and unhappy.

Happy people, enlightened people, and successful people, inspired people, all share something in common. They’ve learned how to manage and increase their energy. Angry people, frustrated people, hateful people, unhappy people, dissatisfied people, and people who are mean and seek to injure others. All have something in common: the ineffective use of energy. They waste energy, they don’t conserve it, and they don’t know how to increase it. Sometimes they steal it, but what they steal, they use up quickly, and they waste it.

The study of Enlightenment and Awareness is the study of energy, power, knowledge and balance. It’s also the science of energy conservation and control. In Zen one uses energy to aid others, to see beauty, to discover love, where we saw no love at all. The Universe is made up of vibrating pulsating light. But when our attention level drops, and our energy is low we don’t see that. Instead we see what appears to be a solid material world.

Everything is stuck together. People are stuck together; they can’t change. We live in structures, houses. We think that the end of the Universe is as far as the telescope can see. All this has very little to do with reality.

A patient is dying in a bed in the hospital. His sight is fading and he looks around, and just sees grayness. You walk in the room and you are feeling great and you don’t see grayness. The sunlight is streaming through the window. The flowers that are in the vase are beautiful. There are little lilies and roses. Awareness is governed by energy.

The primary place where most people lose energy is in their inter-relationships with others. Read carefully: The primary place where most people lose energy is in their inter-relationships with others. That means that you lose your energy in your interactions with the people you know best. You can also gain energy if you interact with people in a way that is beneficial. But in most cases energy is lost: in little games of manipulation, in little struggles of will, in the attempt to possess others, to wrap them up, to dilute them, and to shine them on.

It takes a lot of energy to manipulate someone and keep them on a string; or if you have a lot of energy and people seek it, they try and get to you, and get into your life. They try to keep you off balance, keep you from making good decisions that will empower you, keep you from meditating well, keep you from being athletic and building your body up, and being successful in your career. Because if you are successful and you meditate deeply, and you have a healthy body, then your attention field will become very sharp and you’ll look around and see if anyone is in your life for ill reasons.

Let’s face it, nobody is perfect, right? We live in a world where everybody wants something. But there is a tremendous difference between people who use you, and people who abuse you. People who use you want something from you. They may love you, but ultimately they want something from you, whether it’s something physical, something sexual, or just the fulfillment of their own love by having someone to experience it with, and you use people, too, for the same reasons. So, reciprocity, a symbiotic relationship, is a relationship in which certain people have worked out certain things: “I’m using you in certain ways, you are using me in certain ways.” That’s a balanced association. One is aiding the other, or allowing usage, if you will.

An imbalanced association, though, is when one or both parties or more, if it happens to be a corporation, becomes abusive and takes advantage of them . One tries to block another’s Enlightenment or success, causes pain to others or injures them in any possible way, shape, matter or form – physically, with energy, emotionally, or occultly.

It’s necessary to do a careful evaluation of your life, and discover whether the people in your life, no matter how much you love them, are using you or abusing you. If they are using you, no problem, you should expect that, and you should use them. Proper energy balance occurs there: beings helping each other. But if there are people who are abusing you, then you have to ask them to stop. If they won’t, you must eliminate them from your life. Otherwise they will keep you in a very low energy state.

Naturally, as we all know, it is possible to take energy from someone else. Just as you can steal money from somebody’s wallet, you can take power from someone. This is usually done in a close emotional sexual relationship. In sexual contact there is something that happens – something obviously physical, and something subtle and mysterious. The doorways open between people in that deep level of intimacy, intimate contact, and it is very possible for someone to be very abusive at that time with energy. If one party is trusting, it’s very easy at that time for the other party to format someone. That is to say to put thoughts in their mind, to jam their consciousness or attention, to lower their energy level, or to just take power from them.

You can take power from somebody because a person is open at many levels. That doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but it does quite frequently – human beings, being they way they are: confused, diluted and generally unawakened. You are a person who seeks to increase your energy, which is why I address these remarks to you, not to the general public, who may or may not be interested in increasing their energy.

You have to be very careful about whom you have intimate contact with. You have to monitor the situation constantly; it can change. You can be with someone who is not abusive and it becomes abusive. Then you have to confront them; talk to them. Human beings need things explained to them sometimes. Then if they don’t change, and they probably won’t, it is time for you to change. Most energy is lost in these types of situations, or just within family structures. The only people who can drain your power effectively are people who you are very close to, you are open to, you love, or people you are afraid of.

When you are afraid of people they can gain power over you, meaning that they can lower your energy level. If others have something you want, they can wrap you. This is what we call manipulation. They can make you think that they have something that you have to get from them. They are the exclusive source. They are the only one who can make you happy, and of course, you can never get it yourself.

When we are alive we never picture ourselves dying, yet some day each one of us dies. Some day in a room somewhere, perhaps in a hospital room, in an automobile, or perhaps outdoors, you will leave this world. You won’t be here anymore and everything you know will fade from your view, and it will happen at the darndest time. You’ll be quite convinced that it couldn’t be happening then, and yet you will be powerless to stop it. Then another kind of continuity occurs, and that’s the continuity that’s beyond death.

Death is a doorway, but it is a small, thin, doorway and only a portion of our being can walk through that doorway and the rest stays behind and it’s lost, or transformed into something else. At the time of death we walk through a doorway and our spirit which is very thin slides through into another world, another existence, another experience.

For now we are here, we are in this world, and in this world there are limitations, and no one likes to be limited. We all want freedom; we all want to be limitless. Limitations exist in the mind. Freedom exists in the mind. There are objective circumstances and situations. You can be in jail and you can be free. You can live in a country with restrictions on travel. You can live in a country where they don’t restrict your travel. But happiness, awareness, and consciousness have little to do with physical restrictions.

There are Ten Thousand States of Mind, ten thousand planes of awareness. Most people spend their entire lives confined to a few of these states of mind. Let’s imagine then, in a scale going from the left to the right, let’s say that number one is all the way to the left and ten thousand is way over to the right. Number one is very dark: it has almost no light in it at all; it’s hard to distinguish it from complete darkness. Number ten thousand is bright light, and it is hard to distinguish it from light, yet there is a subtle difference. There are gradations in between 9,998 to be exact. Naturally, since there are ten thousand, there is something more beyond ten thousand. But the Ten Thousand States of Mind are the place, the area of experience, where you spend your time and your life.

Most human beings only experience a few of these states, and most of them are very far down in ranking, down around a hundred. Each state of mind is not simply a mood. Moods exist within the state of mind, but it is a way of seeing life and experiencing it, a way of knowing. Your state of mind creates a view, or your window on life. You may live in Beverly Hills, in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife. You may live in a tenement in East Harlem, alone, in poverty. But your house is a window, and it looks out on something. It may look out on your swimming pool with your kids playing in it. It may look out the gang down the street who is selling drugs to passing buyers.

You have a window and that window, which is your state of mind, determines everything that happens to you. It affords you a view on life. Opportunities, creative ideas, or the lack of them, happiness, frustration, brilliance, talent, success, failure – all these things are determined by the state of mind that you are in. You are the experiencer of states of mind. Yet your state of mind dominates your awareness to such an extent, that you can’t conceive of any other state of mind, other than the state of mind that you are in.

We grow accustomed to thinking of ourselves as a personality with a history. I’ve been here and there. I’ve done this. I like this. I don’t like that. All these ideas that we have about self are the accumulation or an aggregate within a state of mind, and they chain us to a state of mind. Zen is about breaking out of your ideas and experiencing life and not ideas.

For example, when most people see a tree, they don’t see a tree at all. What they see is an idea that they have developed throughout the course of their life of what a tree is. Only when they were very young they really saw a tree. Only at that time were they at all aware of what a tree looked like or perhaps it would be more precise to say what the tree felt like. Other than that they have no idea of what a tree is. As they grow older and they accumulate more ideas and experiences around trees, through associations with trees, experiences with trees, they no longer see what a tree is or feel it. Instead they have a more limited view of what a tree is, an idea. This is true not just of trees but of squirrels which live in trees, people, dogs, cats, jobs, the world, philosophies, everything. The more ideas you have, the less you feel and see life directly.

Concentration and meditation are practices that enable you to alter your state of mind. Within a state of mind, the state of mind that you are in now, there are different possibilities. There is a higher end to the state of mind and a lower end. The higher end let’s call it, the right side of that state of mind, borders the next state of mind and has a better view; it has more light in it. The lower end has less light. If you spend enough time at the lower end of the state of mind, and if you lose enough energy, you can drop to the next state of mind down. You can drop down from a hundred to ninety-nine. If you spend enough time on the right hand side, and you accumulate power and energy, you can kick up to maybe a hundred and one. When you change a state of mind, your whole life changes. Nothing remains the same. Nothing looks the same, because you have changed. You yourself are a continuous awareness.

A person who undertakes the study of meditation is like a gymnast. Most people can do limited things with their bodies, but the gymnast can do a lot more. You become a gymnast of the mind. Very few people have any idea of what life is about, of what their minds can do, or of the forces that affect them throughout the course of their life that cause success, failure, pleasure, pain, and awareness. But in the study of Zen, through the practice of concentration and meditation, you will expand your awareness to gain knowledge, power, and illumination. You may just gain a little knowledge, power, and illumination if you only practice Zen a little bit. If you practice Zen deeply, then you will discover that you are a limitless being and you may attain Enlightenment, which is the ability to freely transact within the Ten Thousand States of Mind without a continuous self or awareness, without the limitations that are generally imposed by conceptual mind.

Meditation and concentration are practices that enable you to become more conscious, and to utilize the moments in your life completely. Concentration and meditation are also taught in other forms. One other form is mindfulness, which is a practice that an individual engages in at all other times. Which is an advanced use of the mind in a variety of different ways: to increase the power of the mind, to develop it fully, and to employ that development in direct physical, mental and psychic ways. The practice mindfulness enables you to use your mind in an extremely effective and precise way. It allows you to succeed at whatever you would like to, whether it’s material success, psychic success, or whatever you want to do, you have your total mind at your disposal.