This morning, here in this meditation hall, we started our winter meditation schedule, which means we started to get up earlier, sitting earlier than we had been for a few weeks. And we're starting a period of intensive study here. And the theme for this period of meditation is the precepts of compassion. We human beings actually have the ability to be kind, to be wonderfully kind to each other and to be kind to other forms of life and even to be kind to things which don't seem to be alive.

[01:28]

We have these fantastic hands with which we can reach out into the world and touch things in a very intelligent, skillful and helpful way. We have wonderful eyes with which we can observe living creatures and non-living phenomena. and we have a great huge heart that is capable of loving everything. And to get this heart together with these hands and these eyes and also we have a voice and language and to connect all these abilities and to use them fully is the point of Zen practice and the point of the Buddha's precepts, the precepts of compassion.

[02:40]

Now I almost want to say however, but I don't really mean however. I almost mean therefore, in order to implement these wonderful abilities, we also have what's called delusion or afflictions. And there's this wonderful drama between our great abilities and the fulfillment of these abilities and some kind of hindrance. or obstruction to this unfoldment of our great capacity. We have the ability to see clearly and we have the ability to see in such a way that we feel separated from other creatures and think that our welfare is not the same as the welfare of others.

[03:49]

or we think that some people are not our business, or some forms of life are not our concern. We somehow can entertain such thoughts and believe them, and this is called delusion. So as part of the implementation of our great capacity, we have to we have to encounter, we have to survey the field of affliction, the field of delusion, the field of passion. The field of passion is also the field of awakening. The field of delusion is the ground of blessing. Now if there are some people who don't have any afflictions, who don't see any afflictions or any delusions, these people are without a working basis.

[05:11]

And in some ways that's the first thing we have to do is get in touch with whatever level of affliction there is or delusion there is in our life. we need to array all that is born of delusion. All the karmic hindrance, all the hindrance of action, of body speech and thought that is born of delusion, we must array that before us and sit still and contemplate how this delusion arises, how it works, and we have a chance to see how it actually is not separate from awakening, how it is actually the ground of blessings.

[06:14]

We can see the darkness turn into light. by studying carefully, quietly, and thoroughly how it all works. So I propose to you that we human beings have great strength, and our great strength is our heart, our compassion.

[07:34]

But we also have relative degrees of weakness, and our weakness is our delusion. And each of us has a unique repertoire in a unique array of delusion. And it is by clarifying what our individual weakness is, what our individual weaknesses are, by clarifying these and actually developing these that our very weakness becomes the qualities of our individual, of our particular form of awakening, of our particular form and mode of compassion. So, in this year of the dog, which I understand dogs are loyal, and they are human-oriented,

[08:45]

They're very concerned with humanity. It's a year of humanity, a year of high ideals. So in this year, can we clarify what our individual weaknesses are, become clear about this, and thoroughly realize the nature of our weakness? Now if you start looking around for your weakness you may think, well now see where is my weakness and where is my strength? But in some sense I propose that our weakness is basically everything we see. The way our mind is functioning is actually our weakness. or not so much the way our mind is functioning in its basic sense, but the fact that we believe that the way our mind is functioning is reality, is our weakness.

[09:54]

And we do believe, pretty much, most of us, most of the time, that what we see is real. It's normal for us to be deluded like that. It's normal for us to have that weakness And without such a weakness, we have nothing to contemplate, really. So we're lucky that we have nice, strong equipment for creating images and fantasies, and that we have a mind which, the principal function of which is fantasy. And we also have the great overarching fantasy that the fantasies that we create are realities. I have not met anyone who is not like this myself. However, I have met some people who have some sense that this is so.

[11:03]

In other words, they have some suspicion that their realities are fantasies. They've seen some glimmering. They've seen some forgetting of their treasured truths. They've got the joke occasionally. So the wonderful thing about the practice of contemplating the field of delusion is that in the contemplation of the field of delusion you are free from all the hindrances which arise from delusion. So we have these Buddhist precepts.

[12:36]

The first one is to go for refuge to awakening, to return to awakening. And we have a ceremony where we say, now will you receive the treasure of awakening. Now when you receive the jewel of awakening, now when you receive the awakening, that delusion is actually a great brightness. And the people say then at that time, they say, yes, I will. Not a terribly complicated response.

[13:40]

Yes, I will. And by saying, yes, I will, in that saying, yes, I will, You are free from all karmic hindrance. You are free from all that which obstructs your heart of compassion. Did you hear that?

[14:46]

Now there's somebody who's perhaps been around longer who says, I don't think so. And that I don't think so is what we call, what I've been calling this morning, delusion. It's a thought, like, I don't think so. And it's a belief that that thought is something other than just a thought. It's believing that that's true. I don't think so. It must be more difficult. It must be more complicated. It must be something more advanced and difficult than saying, yes, I will. Yes, I will receive Buddha's heart right now. But when you say it, however you say it, as you say it, the mind which says, I don't think so, or wait a minute, that mind is not there.

[16:04]

That mind is no longer hindering because you're saying, yes, I will. If you say, no, I won't, then the mind which doesn't believe is functioning very nicely. So, Suzuki Roshi says, so I dare to say, and if you dare to say, yes, I will, then you are free from karma. And he says, someone may say, even though you say yes, you don't mean yes. Someone may say that. You may even say it to yourself. Even in these ceremonies, when a person says yes, right after that they think, now, did I mean that? Or their friends may say, I wonder if she meant that. This is, again, the mind of delusion pops right up there.

[17:10]

Boom. There it is. You don't have to worry about it. It's got a nice, strong heart, too. But there is the ability to say, yes, I will. But actually, if you say yes, if your mind is tender enough to say yes, it may look very childish, but that is the way you receive the precepts. That is the way a mountain is a mountain. It says, yes, I will be a mountain. And at that time, the mountain is free of all karmic hindrance. At that time, the mountain receives Buddha's precepts.

[18:13]

A childish mountain Hello, who are you? I'm a mountain. At that time, the mountain is not hindered from being a mountain at all. And that mountain helps all sentient beings be free. And it's the same with a roaring river. Yes, I will be a roaring river like a child and I will do my job as a river and everything in your mind is like that if you can let it be there completely itself it turns into itself so thoroughly that it's free of all hindrance and is just radiance

[19:26]

Can you be tender enough to say yes, I will, to your life? Even though, in your own mind, you may tease yourself for being so childish, so simple. Evil and good are fairly equal matches. Some people think evil is a little stronger than good, or a lot stronger. And some people think good is stronger than evil. I actually have not been able to assess which is stronger myself.

[20:38]

But dharma is not exactly stronger than evil. It's just that dharma is not at all hindered by evil. The truth, the teaching of truth and the practice of truth is not at all hindered by evil. It's not a matter of overpowering delusion. It's a matter of becoming skillful in our relationships. skillful in our relationships with delusion, which means skillful in our relationships with what we think other people are. We don't meet other people through our perception of them.

[21:41]

We meet our perception of them and we believe our perception of them sometimes and then our perceptions turn into delusion and affliction. But again, if we realize what we're looking at and sit still and watch how things work, we actually can meet people. We can cut through our confusion and our delusion about what people are and actually meet them. But we must be clear about the weakness in our view of people and animals and plants and sky and mountains. If we can be clear and clarify our weakness in our perceptions, we can actually meet a mountain. We can shake hands with a river. We can have a blessed relationship with a living creature.

[22:48]

if we're willing to be honest about what we're up to. And what we're up to is that we think we're right. But if you realize that it's just that you think you're right, then you won't need to believe that you're right anymore. You will be relieved of self-righteousness and then you can say, yes, I will. When the self-righteous, even the most self-righteous, when they say, yes, I will, at that time they're freed of self-righteousness. Those who cannot yet say, yes, I will, are still somewhat enchained by self-righteousness. They think, I know it's right and I'm usually right, but I can't quite go so far as to say, yes, I will be Buddha's child.

[23:57]

Because I have the correct standards about what's right and I know that I'm not really quite suitable. I have good reason to restrict myself from paradise, not to mention everybody else. We have this image, you know, of a fish swimming in the ocean and that there's a gate in the ocean. And when the fish swims through the gate in the ocean, it turns into a dragon on the other side. This gate is the gate of receiving the precepts, of receiving the precept of blessing all realms of misery.

[25:01]

It's the gate of saying, yes, I will. And what actually happens is that at the point the fish is swimming along, and actually at the point that the fish, or in the way that the fish is just a fish, the fish just being the fish, instantly, that's the gate. When the fish is the fish, that's the gate. And as soon as the fish is the fish, the fish passes through this gate and becomes a dragon. As soon as the fish is a fish, the fish is not a fish. As soon as the fish is completely, thoroughly a fish, a deluded fish, then the fish is not a deluded fish, a fish is a dragon. Before the fish was swimming freely in the water, but the fish had dreams of what freedom was, and it was not like that. Finally, the dreams of freedom were just the dreams of freedom, and the dreams of freedom were not dreams of freedom anymore.

[26:14]

And now the fish is really free to be a fish, which is called a dragon. Yes, I will be a fish. Yes, I will be a dragon. In order to unleash your great compassionate heart, you must study yourself completely inside out. You must study yourself outside and inside, but particularly you must study yourself inside out. In other words, you must study yourself through studying others. You will see yourself through all others. If you want to set this person free, your concern for this personal being will become connected to the concern for all of life.

[27:36]

When you realize that observing all living beings is your freedom, because observing all living beings is really observing your own delusion. But this is not to mean that you don't respect. Respect. In other words, look again at everything. You do look again. You look, and then you look again. You look, and wait a minute, what was that? What was that? This is how I study myself. Whatever it is, whoever it is, it's your way to realize yourself. It's your way to be a fish completely. It's your way to say, yes, I will. You don't have to say, yes, I will.

[28:43]

All you have to do is see what you see. Think what you think. and meet yourself in everything. And put yourself into everything because you do put yourself into everything. There's nothing that is not touched by ourself. And there's nothing which doesn't touch ourself. Everything is our life. and our life is everything. Is this arrayed before you and are you sitting upright contemplating this? Yes, I will. Is everyone asking me to live this way?

[29:53]

Yes, they are. Does it sound like that? No, it doesn't. When someone says, look at me, you think they're asking you to look at somebody else. They're just reminding you who you are. They're helping you out. And you should say, yes, I will. I will look at you. I will look at my delusion. Thanks for reminding me that I'm a deluded fish. Thanks for putting it in that tricky way, which I've managed not to be fooled by. I was told by a friend of mine quite a long time ago that Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats was a good poem.

[31:19]

So I memorized it. And in the process of memorizing, in the process of reading it, and also in the process of reciting it to myself quietly and out loud, the thing that strikes me about, I say, the poem, but actually it's not the poem, it's my mind that's reciting the poem. The thing that strikes me about it is that there's a whiteness or a brightness that comes to me, that appears to me in the relationship to this poem. And again, I say it's not the poem. I say it's my mind, and yet it is the poem. Somebody wrote that poem. I mean, it is John Keats, and yet it's not John Keats.

[32:32]

It's my own mind. But my mind is John Keats. And John Keats is such a kind person that he let me have him be my mind. Somehow he works so hard with language, or he works so joyfully with language, that he's become my mind. And he and his poem is radiant to me And his poem shows me that my mind is radiant. And how is my mind radiant? My mind is radiant when I look at it carefully, word by word of my mind. Image after image, fantasy after fantasy, The poem does not stay the same. Each time it looks slightly different, and yet each time almost it seems to be the same word.

[33:36]

Thou still unravished bride of quietness, thou foster child of silence and slow time. What is this bride, this unravished bride of quietness? What is this foster child of silence? I, we are speaking the word. We say the word.

[34:45]

We make the sound. Unravished bride of quietness. Sylvan historian, thou canst thus express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme. What leafed, fringed legend haunts about thy shape of deities or mortals or of both in tempeh or in dales of arcady? What deities or mortals are these? What maiden's loaf? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

[35:46]

What pipes and timbrels? What is this active, wild scene here? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.

[37:18]

Therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared, pipe ditties of no tone, pipe to the spirit, ditties of no tone. What is the sweet melody? that's sweeter than the ones we can hear. And I can tell you what it is, but when I tell you, you hear it. And there's still one that's not, that you can't hear at the same time. Even when you say, yes, I will, there's another yes, I will that you can't hear.

[38:23]

Another yes, I will that sets you free of all hindrance. So when I say, yes, I will, I say that to celebrate a silent one, a one that's more endeared. which is never stopped and never hindered by all the no I won'ts and no I can'ts and I can't even remember. There is a silent yes I will that never moves and is never hindered by anything we think or do or say. Your spirit can hear it when you say, yes, I will. And if you watch yourself carefully when you say, no, I won't, it's there then, too. Are you sitting upright, observing how these things work?

[39:40]

observing how the field of delusion works and how it is actually the field of blessing. And the first step is not to try to make delusion into something else or make misery into something else, but to go into the misery, to enter every nook and cranny, every refuge of misery, and bring blessing and leave blessing. But you can't leave blessing in the land of misery unless you find the misery, unless you reach out and enter it fully. And as soon as you enter it fully, the blessing is completed. and you will be met in that reaching out.

[40:47]

Do you see the refuges of misery? Do you see the afflictions? Are you contemplating the fully arrayed realm and ground of delusion? Do you see it? Are you sitting there? Have you fully expressed yourself and reached out completely into the whole thing? Can you feel the limit of your heart? And at that limit of where you feel its end and its block. There. There. There you will meet yourself and there you will find out what other people are. We have the capacity to do this, to be this way, just because we are this way.

[42:04]

we are fully deluded and therefore we can be fully deluded and therefore we can be fully free of delusion. My, what is it, fire and brimstone is that if you're not fully deluded you'll always be a slave of delusion. and you will not be fully compassionate because you'll only be cultivating a corner of the field of happiness. I say you, but of course I mean if I'm that way, it's the same. So I have, you know, when I... I notice this practice everywhere, this practice of... sitting upright in the midst of karmic hindrance and delusion and using these opportunities.

[43:24]

And I find poets are often speaking to this point, Ode to a Grecian Urn being an example. And then I think, well, maybe I should read you some poems, but I hesitate to read the poems because I wonder what I'm reading the poem for. Am I reading the poem to prove to you that the poets agree with me? Am I reading the poem to show you that somebody can speak of this practice of contemplating delusion in a beautiful way? Do I hope it will encourage you? and make you sure of where you should do your work? That seems all right. Am I doing it to decorate my talk with some beautiful flowers?

[44:30]

So when you look back on it, you'll say, well, that poem happened. So I think to some extent that part I hesitate to decorate this dirty, desolate, muddy field with lovely spring flowers. I hesitate to do that because I think it might make you less willing to do your work in such a field as you found here this morning. If I can get you interested in what I'm saying without decorating it, maybe you'll be interested in what you're thinking without decorating it. So I want you to know that I have several poems here right below my eyes here, which you might think were very beautiful if I read them to you.

[45:38]

And they are very much encouraging you along the same lines that I have been doing so. Maybe, again, more poetically and more beautifully, but in some ways I think it's better to listen to me than them. Because the way I put it is more like daily life pain. Occasionally I notice myself waxing somewhat poetically and I feel good for the relief. Such things will happen to you too. You will become aware that you are every single moment of your life a poet. That you're creating a world out of your mind, out of your heart. And it takes this form and this form And we don't have to pull in any other forms than this for you to be a poet.

[46:45]

And in fact, there's some reason, some big reason, some many, many reasons why you're doing it this way right now. And why I'm talking this way right now. So I'm not going to read the poems, but if anybody wants to know what they are, I'll tell you some other time. But I am going to try to sing a song. Well, maybe I won't. Well, maybe I won't. I think I can maybe do it, though, because I think some of you know this one, fortunately.

[47:56]

But we don't have the text, so you're going to have to help me. And, of course, it's about what I'm talking about here. Although I do wish I had it. But I don't. Or maybe I do. Anyway, it's called... It's interesting. It's from a musical, a comedy or a musical. The musical is called The King and I. And it's called Getting to Know You. So, probably some of you know this, so I'll try to listen to you as we start.

[49:01]

Getting to know... Is that a good tone? Is that good? Higher? Kathy, you want to pick a tone? It starts low. Okay, it starts low. Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Getting to you, getting to hope you like me. And you notice right behind me I'm crazy.

[50:05]

Because of all the wonderful new things I'm learning from you, you, day by day. We missed something. Okay. So now there's something in between that we missed. And does anybody know it? that's very important putting it my way putting it my way but nicely and you are precisely my cup of tea putting it my way, but nicely, you are precisely my cup of tea.

[51:09]

And there's something else, too. Isn't it easy? When I am with you, you know how you say. Haven't you noticed? Suddenly I'm bright and breezy. Because of all the wonderful and new things I'm learning from you day by day. Well, I think that... Is it all right if someone makes a little announcement that some of you may be interested in? Is that OK?

[52:10]

Could you please make your announcement now before I forget? There seems to be a blinding interest in the issues. I know the Buddhist Peace Fellowship is having a pilgrimage to the Nevada guest site in April on Buddha's birthday that weekend. And so I thought it would be appropriate to make an announcement about an event that's happening in San Francisco down the county. It's Tuesday morning. who's the secretary of the Department of Energy. And the Department of Energy has invited several people from the anti-nuclear community plus industry people to come to a roundtable discussion. And that's going to be happening, and it's open to the public. And that will be next Tuesday morning at the Sheraton House Hotel in downtown San Francisco Market in New Montgomery, 20 Peaks Road.

[53:15]

And the event will take place at 9.30 to 11.30 in the morning. So it's a very large room and it would be wonderful if as many people as possible could come so that there's lots out here to really care about what's going on in their area. Yes, just January 11th. Thank you. You're welcome. So I found my piece of paper. Getting to know you. Getting to know. Getting to know. Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you.

[54:18]

Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me Getting to know you, putting it my way but nicely You are precisely my cup of tea Getting to know you Getting to feel free and easy When I am with you Getting to know what to say Haven't you noticed Suddenly I'm bright and breezy Because of all the beautiful and new things I'm learning about you day by day.

[55:26]

Any questions? I've been wanting to ask this question sometime. I've been wanting to ask this question for some time. Buddhism may well be a kind of inner solution to human suffering. But doesn't delusion offer us an almost technicolor palette of emotions to play with and experience, without which my life could be less? Well, without which our life would be death. So why is the emphasis on not suffering? Why is the emphasis on not suffering? It seems to me that the Buddhist emphasis is on not suffering. No, no. The Buddhist emphasis is on suffering.

[56:26]

But all human beings, as far as I know, want to be free of suffering. Everybody I know wants to be free of suffering. So the Buddha says, you want to be free of suffering? Well, then, first of all, face that there's suffering. Can you enjoy it? Can you enjoy suffering? You do enjoy suffering. Actually, suffering, partly, one of the means of suffering is to experience. So, as a tenant, it might be possible for you to invite our lives into suffering first. Definitely, you should definitely completely acknowledge your suffering. And when you completely acknowledge your suffering, and acknowledging your suffering doesn't mean to, you know, like, you know, what do they call it, take some little section of it and rub your nose in that section over and over. Acknowledging suffering means to fill every nook and cranny of your consciousness to completely embrace the totality of your suffering. And when you thoroughly embrace the totality of your suffering, you will be released from suffering. You will no longer be afraid of suffering.

[57:32]

You will no longer run from suffering. You will no longer be tormented by suffering. Suffering will just be completely itself and when it's completely itself you will naturally be liberated from it you will not lose access to anything you will then get full access to your emotions and your emotions then will be useful to you instead of you know constantly frustrating you they will be useful So like, you know, we see this expression, a fish swims in the water, and no matter how far this fish swims, it never runs out of water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, it never runs out of air. But if the fish would leave the water, it would die at once. If the bird would leave the air, it would die at once. know that for the fish water is life and for the bird air is life.

[58:33]

And the fish is life to the water and the bird is life to the air. The same is true of us. We swim in delusion and no matter how far we swim there's no end to the colorfulness and vividness of delusion. We never run to an end of it. If we would leave the delusion we would die at once. know that we are life to delusion and delusion is life to us. However, if a fish swims completely in the water and completely is a fish swimming in the water and a human is a human completely inhabiting the world of delusion and realizes that life is delusion or we are life to delusion and delusion is life to us if we realize that we become free of the water we become free of the delusion just like the fish becomes free of the water. You don't have to clamp down on the vividness and vitality of your consciousness.

[59:35]

As a matter of fact, you should try to catch up with it and honor it and fully realize its full function. And when you do, it will naturally be liberated from itself. If you hesitate at all to be a human being in the fullness of humanness, you will be enslaved by humanness. Humanness will be a burden, a little burden or a big burden, but even a little burden carried moment after moment, day after day, will break you. But if you accept the fullness of your humanness, it will drop off you. And then you can pick it up with joy and use it and package it and offer it to all sentient beings. And then your humanness becomes a blessing instead of an enslavement. But you have to be completely thorough about this, otherwise you aren't released. We're released in thoroughness. We're not released in 95%-ness or less. And I don't know how close an ordinary person is to being a fully human creature, whether it's 95, 99, 98, 65, 28.

[60:43]

It varies. But a lot of people are quite close to being completely themselves. But a tiny bit of difference, a tiny bit of holding back will stop you from being free. Because it shows you don't really trust yourself. You don't really trust that the place to become free from is here and now. And this is the only place that you can walk forth from. So we don't at all demean or discourage human vitality, human vividness, human imagination. We honor it in its full, awesome potential, and we try to become skillful in relationship to it. We study it and study it and study it. And we study it with the faith that if we understand ourselves, we will be able to be a great service to all life, because that's what we really are. But you have to face, first of all, the dirty details.

[61:43]

You can't skip over them and go on to this advanced work. Yes? Could you talk more about your basic trust in those moments of suffering and embracing the dirty details, if you say it? Could you talk a little bit more about that? Because I noticed, for me, that when Ivan knows you can't play, what happens is there's the alternative for the mind to run from it. Yes. Or else the judging voice comes up there and stops the unworthiness. And the doubt, the basic doubt that this is truly going to bring me to myself, to raise that pinpoint with someone. Let's go over that again. When you get to that place, did you say? Well, talking about what you said, the dirty details, or being in the heat of it. Yes, being. The tendency... May you judge?

[62:45]

Well, first you said there's a tendency to run away. Yes, because I want to... Nirvana's over there. It's never in the dirty detail. Right. So you come down to some dirty detail, like, for example, do you have any right now? LAUGHTER She's rubbing her forehead. She's laughing. She's smiling. She's touching her nose. This is a dirty detail, okay? Are you having trouble being here? Okay, well, this is what to do. It's only for this second. It's like this. Are you here? Okay, this is how you do it. And again. Okay? And again, and there's a tendency to go away. Did you go away? Fear arises in serious places. Yes. Are you back? Yes, that's how I named the fear.

[63:47]

Yeah. You admitted the fear. That's another dirty detail. It's another dirty detail. Fear, fear, fear, fear. Here it is. We have fear. And I've noticed the tendency for the mind to just go, and it takes some... some time, some while to name it and come back. I mean, and I'm often to... The tendency of the mind to go is another dirty detail. The mind has this detail that it goes. It seems to go. Our mind seems to go someplace. How could our mind go someplace? It doesn't go anyplace. It just says, now we're going someplace. It's sitting there looking you in the face and saying, hello, now we're going someplace. Now we're going someplace. Your job is not to stop the mind from talking to you like that. Your job is to say, I see, okay, we'll follow this one through.

[64:50]

In the meantime, you're just always there, present with it. And I think what happens to me is I start feeling badly. that I judge myself for not being worthier. That's another dirty detail, judging yourself. All of a sudden realizing I've been tripping out on this, whatever, and then there's the tendency at that point to be part of myself and to sometimes forget that compassion and gently bring myself back. That's the thing. Sometimes it's hard to be gentle. It's hard to be gentle when you're not being gentle. Matter of fact, it's not hard, it's impossible. Matter of fact, what compassion is, is to say, I'm not being gentle. That's gentle. To let yourself not be gentle is gentle. Not being gentle is not being gentle. But to let yourself, and to acknowledge that you're not being gentle, that's quite gentle. Just like if you had a little baby who wasn't being gentle with herself. You say, oh, that's okay, darling. You're not being gentle with yourself, but this is what you're doing to yourself.

[65:51]

It's hard to watch. It hurts. But you have to recognize that that's what's happening with this creature. And if you rush ahead and try to stop it from being the way it is, you may harm it. And it's not gentle to try to get it to not be the way it is, namely rough with itself. If some creature, including yourself, is being rough with herself, Then someone else can be gentle with that person who's being rough and show that person a gentleness to complement that roughness rather than be rough with their roughness and basically say, well, I can do that too. Let's both do it now. But you could also do that. Sometimes that's fun too to say, oh, we're being rough, are we? Well, let's all be rough then, shall we? Shall we all be rough? Can I be rough too? There can be gentleness in that too, a playfulness. Yes. There's no fixed characteristic of what gentleness will be. Sometimes gentleness, sometimes roughness wants recognition.

[66:57]

Sometimes they're saying, I'm being rough, Mom. You say, oh, you're being rough, aren't you? Wow, that's really rough. That's gentleness. Because that's really what's being asked for is a little reflection of this roughness. They want to see, did I get the roughness? Is this roughness? And sometimes it's safer to try out, get a little recognition of roughness before getting a little recognition for gentleness. And some people are afraid to check out their gentleness or their tenderness. So first they try out their hardness. And if they get some positive feedback, okay, now I'm going to try hardness, but here it is, and you say, yep, that's hard, they say, oh, okay, good, now I'll try gentle. Maybe this person, if this person reflected that and honored that, maybe they could honor something which I'm a little bit more afraid to express. But the same thing happens with yourself. Can you let yourself bring this stuff out? Can you let yourself bring your stuff out, express yourself? Can you let yourself be the full vividness of your life?

[67:58]

Do you allow yourself to be yourself? I do accept them when I'm not. That's right. And then? And then that's what you are. Actually, you always do allow yourself, but the way you allow yourself sometimes is you allow yourself by saying you can't be this way. Really, there is no not being yourself, but the way we put it on sometimes is we fall for it and we think we're being somebody else. But we never are. Well, that's why I appreciated your focus being compassion. It seems like everything, even what we think we're not being ourselves, bring that compassion, the skillful need to remember, because battering myself hurts, it doesn't really help. Well, again, saying that battering yourself has not helped is, that's another kind of dirty detail, you think that way, that you judge battering yourself. Compassion is to realize that battering yourself is not really helping or not helping.

[68:58]

It's just what seems to have happened. It's just a story you have. And that story can be a blessing. So just remember that to say that battery myself has not helped, that's just a story. That's not a reality. That's just your opinion. I could say, well, yes, it has helped. That's another story. That's not true either. The point is we're just talking, you know? We're just deluded. We're deluded beings, you and I. But if we can be deluded beings together, we can be free together too. three of our stories. Some other people have some other stories here. There's a circle of suffering and harm, suffering and harm. It's easier to relate to what you're talking about, to the practice that you're talking about, when I see it as suffering, that is, to experience suffering. When I see it as harming, which always goes with being the victim, being the harmer, then it's harder to see the practice, like the image you used near the beginning of your talk about being the roaring river.

[70:17]

Mm-hmm. Well, you know, roaring rivers sometimes destroy things. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm. No difference. You're going to tell me there's no difference between suffering and harming. Why are you? Well, let's get into it a little bit here. So where does suffering turn to harming in your eyes? All the time, every moment. Yeah, okay. And how does that happen, that suffering turns to harming? I don't know which comes first, but... There's some pain and fear to experience present which everything then gets distorted or something happens to everything at once and then My actions are not appropriate and they harm. I mean, that's pretty general. You want something more specific?

[71:19]

Well, it's good you got a little bit more specific. We could try to get more specific. Probably if we got more specific, it would even be better. So partly what I'm saying is, as we get into the specifics, and not just the specifics, but we get into a full selection of specifics around this issue... we will get some thoroughness with this issue. And at the thoroughness with this issue, with this problem, with this dynamic you're seeing, with this cycle, in the thoroughness of that, the whole situation naturally leaps off itself and becomes free of the whole problem. But we have to get into the specifics of it. And we need to take care of ourselves so that we can be very gentle with ourselves as we kind of like breathe our way into the specifics. If we push ourselves too hard, we may break something even in the process of contemplation. So let's get into this a little bit more now. There is some suffering and then there is

[72:21]

I thought you were going to go on to the next person. Are you ready to go into this more? What do you want to do? Well, let's give it a few minutes, because it could be really long. It could be, yes. Did you look at your watch? No. All right, well, I'll pick something unspectacular to illustrate harmony. Good. Unspectacular is good. Okay. I came here this morning. I like it. I like entering the space that you open. It's even a little bit liberating. And then I remember. that partly I came here to escape something else I was supposed to do, and that in not doing that, I'm failing and breaking the promise.

[73:24]

And in a kind of a cumulative pattern of breaking promises, I'm harming, harming, and then I shut down, and I can't enjoy this little opening, liberation that coming here I came for. Is that a good one? That's a very good one. it seems like what I'm talking about would be very much that you came here so that in some sense you could open up not just to whatever promises you may have not taken care of this morning, but maybe as a whole pattern of your life. So let's, I'm encouraging us to array this whole pattern of all these delusions before us which you contemplated and experienced some entry into and then some release. And your reward for experiencing that is to open up to some others.

[74:29]

Now let's carefully, let's gently enter into contemplation of those things which are born of other judgments in your mind, of how things work, of how you've promised certain things and done certain things and how those work and how that's painful and how that seems hindering. Let's contemplate all that. Let's sit upright and contemplate that. You want to know what that produced? Yeah. For one moment, I kind of played it all back, but I realized that that would make me, that would be very painful, and I would not want to do that pain in a large group like this. So I stopped. Well, at least you saw that. A big part of Zen practice is to take care of yourself so that you can access this totality, which usually pain will come up in facing these things.

[75:44]

The basic principle, which I didn't emphasize strongly today, is that whenever you think of something of the other than yourself, whenever you think of the other and you think the other is not you, that always hurts. The way our mind is is that fortunately or unfortunately it's built so that when we create separation it disturbs us a little bit at least. So we need to be able to go to the center of the pain that we feel when we contemplate separation. Yes? Yes? Harming others is really even more tricky than experiencing suffering. That's what I think. That is, to stop the judgment. When you're aware of harming.

[76:50]

Yes, when you're aware of harming. In some sense of powerlessness. That's a thought, too. Powerlessness to stop harming. Yes, that's it. You just have to say, when's that thought? That's right. There's the image or the impression that you're harming. In your case, there's a feeling of powerlessness to stop yourself from harming. This is one thought, I'm harming. Another thought is, I'm powerless to stop. Now, some people do not have the thought, I'm harming, and other people have the thought that they are harming. It's another scenario. And if... the person that goes around thinks, I'm thinking I'm not harming and believing that, then that's their delusion. If you go around believing that you are harming, that is a delusion. To believe, to have the thought I'm harming and to think that's true is, I say, a delusion. To have the thought I'm not harming and to believe that is a delusion. To say I'm neither harming nor not harming and believe that is a delusion.

[77:55]

Human beings do generate such thoughts, and they, generally speaking, believe what they just thought. They say, you know, they do something, and someone else may even say, that was harmful, and they may say, no, it wasn't. In other words, I didn't think it was, or even I didn't mean it was. Now, to say I don't mean it to be harming is slightly less deluded than to say it wasn't. I cannot judge from my side what is harming. If I do something and you people say it's harmful, it doesn't mean that it is harmful. It means that you say it's harmful. And if I believe that I think it's not and you think it is and I'm right and you're wrong, that's wrong. That's delusion. For me to think that you're right is delusion. For me to think both of us are wrong is delusion. It's just all delusion. It's all basically self-righteousness. And you can self-righteously decide, you can decide, you can sit there and you can be God and you can decide, I just decided what I did was wrong.

[78:57]

I decided what I did was right. And that's true. It's the thinking that it's true that's the self-righteousness. To think, oh, I think that was harmful, that looks harmful to me, that wasn't what I intended, I'm sorry about that. You can feel all those things without believing what you just thought. You can actually feel bad about things you do without believing that it's true that what you think you did was what happened. I said something like, you can feel bad about what you do without believing that it's true what you think you just saw. Like, for example, I can say something to you, and I think I hurt your feelings, and I can be sorry. But I don't have to think, that was a bad thing I did, and I'm right, that was a bad thing. Because you may say to me, well, you hurt my feelings, but I just happened to have been awakened at that moment, and I just experienced liberation when you said that. So it wasn't actually harmful at all. You actually helped me greatly. And then to switch over to think, well, then what I did was helpful, and that's true. That's another delusion. But to think, well, maybe it was helpful.

[80:00]

That's not a delusion. Unless I believe that it's true that maybe it was. The feeling of, I wonder what's going on. in a situation can be there even when you have a definite feeling. What if you, you know, the image that's been going through my head as you've been going through these words is, pa, what if somebody hits a child really hard? Yes. Okay. I mean, all of our thoughts about whether I think I did harm or whether I don't think I did harm. Yeah. Is there harm or isn't there harm? If people say there's harm, then people say there's harm. And people can go to jail and get their arms and legs broken because of that. Okay? But once there's harm, once people think there's harm, then what do we do with the harm? If there's harm, what are we going to do now? What do you do when there's harm? Well, take care of the situation. How do you take care of the situation? Well, let's assess the suffering. What suffering do we have here?

[81:02]

How do you take care of it? How can we be gentle with the suffering? And, for example, if you find a person, let's say somebody breaks their leg, you run up there, you see them suffering, you think, okay, now this person's been harmed, they broke their leg, okay, and maybe this is my child or my loved one, so it hurts me to see them in pain, so I want to do something. Well, there's nothing you can do maybe because you don't know how to fix the leg. You could say, well, I'll go find a doctor. Well, fine, but maybe you don't want to leave the person because maybe they're out in the woods someplace and they might catch cold, so maybe the first thing you should do is get them warm. But even if you get them warm and they're safe, then you still want their pain to go away. But your job is not to make their pain go away because you don't know how to make their pain go away. Your job is to be there and suffer with them. Is this harmful? Well, they've been harmed. Somehow they got harmed by various causes and conditions. Maybe somebody pushed them. Maybe they fell on their own. Maybe who knows how they got harmed. Anyway, you've got to take care of the situation.

[82:03]

I propose to you that if you can deal with this pain of someone else or yourself suffering like that, that this is extremely calming and satisfying and clarifying. And that from such a position, it's not this... I say that from such a position, you have a chance of seeing what's going on. And if you see what's going on, you'll be able to see that there is no harm. There is no harm. There's no harm Really. But people think there's harm, and two different people in the same situation, one thinks it's harmful and one thinks it's not. It's not that people think or not think certain things, it's actually that there isn't harm. Now, there also is harm. And by admitting that, by working with the harm that seems to be appearing and feeling the suffering of the harm we see, Not to deny that at all, not to go away from that at all, but by completely entering the harm and the cause, the effects of harm, and the feeling of what's all the pain around all the harm that's ever been done.

[83:08]

And the basic harm is the harm that the human mind creates by saying that it's separate from something. That's the basic harm. Basic fundamental harm is we think we're not one with all beings. That's our basic violence that we do in the world. And that, fortunately, is painful for us. Therefore, we don't get by with that harm. We aren't comfortable with it. And other people don't like us doing that either. But what they do like, what is encouraging to them, is if we settle with the pain of the harm which we're doing every single moment, every moment we harm the world. mind naturally harms it naturally harms it naturally creates separation it does that it has to do that in order to do this creative imagination that it does this is part of our deal we are basically fundamentally there's something harming in our in our mind and it hurts if you sell with that pain you can see the harm see how it works when you see how it works you can see

[84:13]

And it doesn't really work that way. It's just an illusion. It's not reality. It's not reality that you're right and I'm wrong or that I'm right and you're wrong or that they're wrong and we're right. It's not reality. That's the way we think and we can't stop thinking in those ways. And thinking those ways makes us upset. It doesn't make us at peace. It bothers us, fortunately. If you can accept that pain and identify that pain, you can catch yourself causing that pain. If you catch yourself causing that pain, you can see how it works. When you see how it works, thoroughly, you will be liberated from it. When you're liberated from it, you will never do anything harmful again. It is impossible to do harm from that place. All you can do is benefit, because what you do is you convey to people compassion. Everybody suffering, you convey compassion to them at that time, because you've just been compassionate with yourself. You've completely thoroughly embraced your own suffering seen the cause of it and then be released from it therefore you can enter all other suffering and matter of fact you instantly naturally do and also you receive all compassion you receive all compassion at that moment and you enact all compassion at that moment and if there's if there's been harm if there is suffering you embrace it and release it and you show others how to do it and you're not afraid

[85:45]

of any of the grisly, painful, kinky, twisted details of manifest reality. And you show others that they too can be who they are. And each person has a different set of judgments against themselves and others, a different set of beliefs of what reality is. Each person must enter into that weakness. That is a weakness. That is what weakens us. That is what prevents us from embracing all life. Each of us must acknowledge and clarify that weakness and develop that weakness because that weakness, in its completeness, in its thoroughness, is our liberation. That limitation is our liberation. But the mind also has this thing of zipping off to some other place and thinking it has something better to do, or holding itself back, or pushing itself forward, any place but right here. It does that.

[86:46]

Of course, it actually is doing that right here. So you actually never really do get lost, but to settle into perfectly onto the workings of your mind is extremely... Nothing is more subtle. And the world is very kind because it offers us endless... complications and twists and turns to see if we can re-find that place. And it forces us, it encourages us to become more and more awake and alert and complete and thorough and compassionate. The world is the perfect place to develop compassion. And it's the worst place not to have it. It shows.

[87:31]

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