Some years ago I heard that the meditations on love, which has these four aspects of loving-kindness and compassion and joy and equanimity, were primarily intended as an antidote to anger, which I think is true. Not that they're primarily for that purpose, but that they are antidotes to anger. And I heard that they were preliminary practices. and that there are concentration practices.

[01:03]

And in this big book, this is kind of a classical book on Buddhist practice, which is divided into three parts. This book is called The Path of Purification in English, and in Pali it's called Visuddhi Magga. And magga means path, and visuddhi means purification. The first part of it's about ethical practices, practice of virtue. The second part's about the practice of concentration. The third part's about the practice of wisdom. And the meditations on love, these four meditations on love, are in the concentration section. And they're called, these four meditations are called the, sometimes they're called the divine abodes. Or in Sanskrit or Pali they're called Brahma Viharas.

[02:13]

Vihara is like a temple or a place of spiritual practice. And Brahma is like one of the leaders of the gods. And They're also called the Four Unlimiteds, and they're in the concentration section. So if they're just concentration, then there's some limit to them. So I'm not saying they are just concentration, but I would say that they're part of settling down. So these meditations of love are part of settling down into our body-mind experience.

[03:25]

Some phenomena or some reality can be very much true and fundamentally part of our life and yet not necessarily be the full range of our work. So love, being loving and compassionate and joyful and equanimous, I propose that is our nature. That's the way we really are. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we don't. When we see it, we're wise. When we don't, we're ignorant. But it's there all the time. And it's in each of us. It's in everything. So it comes with the high recommendation of being one of the elements of reality, one of the elements of the way we really are.

[04:54]

But it doesn't mean it's the entirety of our meditation practice. So because it's not the entirety, I think some people, particularly maybe in some branches of Zen, have developed a...what's the right word? They haven't appreciated the practice of love enough because it doesn't offer the full range of practice. One time actually someone, actually a Brahmin, a Brahmin is like a priest in the priestly class in Indian caste system. So a Brahmin priest asked the Buddha if he taught these loving kindness meditations and the Buddha said yes and he said, well my teacher also teaches this, what's the difference between

[05:59]

your way of teaching it and his way of teaching it. The Buddha said, I teach loving kindness, but I teach the practice of loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity in conjunction with the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and the Seven Wings of Enlightenment, the Seven Limbs of Enlightenment. when you practice loving-kindness together with the Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, and so on, this is the way to complete enlightenment. So the meditation on love needs to be done in conjunction with the study of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.

[07:01]

In other words, the element in our being, the loving element in our being, the compassionate element in our being, the joyful element in our being, and the equanimous quality of our being, that needs to be there when we do the practice of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Are some of you not familiar with the Four Noble Truths? Would you raise your hand if you don't know about the Four Noble Truths? And does anybody also, who doesn't, haven't heard about the Eightfold Path? Would you raise your hand? Okay. So the Four Noble Truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origination of suffering, how suffering arises and appears. the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path which is the end of suffering. Now I say it's the truth of the path which is the end of suffering, but sometimes it's said to be the path which leads to the end of suffering.

[08:18]

I say it is the end of suffering, but anyway, whether it's path two or the path that is, that's the Eightfold Path. So that's the Four Normal Truths. Those truths are the content or the object of highest wisdom. This is the content of the Buddha's enlightenment. When the Buddha was enlightened, the Buddha saw the truth of suffering the truth of the origins of suffering. He saw the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path, which is the end of suffering. He saw the actuality and the reality of suffering. He saw suffering as it actually has come to be. He saw the origins, the actuality of the origin of suffering as it comes to be. He saw the actuality, the reality of the end of suffering.

[09:24]

He realized the end of suffering and he saw and realized the actuality of the path as it has actually come to be. This was his highest wisdom. But in order to have this wisdom, he had to practice loving kindness. And also after that wisdom, he continued to practice loving-kindness. So loving-kindness is part of the container of the loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity is like the container for highest wisdom. And I feel that some Buddhist meditators and some Zen students try to enter into a meditation on highest truth, but they don't have this womb of love.

[10:43]

contain their meditation practice so their meditation practice isn't complete and doesn't flower into perfect wisdom, first of all into regular wisdom, and then doesn't go beyond regular wisdom to be perfect wisdom without that kind of containment. So you may hear some statements about, like I said, about that loving kindness is for antidote to anger or it's for concentration or also that it's to help overcome fear. That's true. But somehow that makes it sound that somehow it doesn't give it enough credit for number one being necessary and number two being actually it is reality.

[11:49]

Love is reality. So that's also why it's necessary. However, there's other dimensions of reality which don't necessarily speak up or demonstrate themselves in the language of love. And, for example, one of those aspects of reality which is fundamental is that, but not separate from love, but just doesn't necessarily come out, is that The being, the body, the mental experiences, the person, and all other persons and all other things are interdependent and insubstantial.

[12:50]

In some sense that's an implication of love is that everything is interdependent or love isn't everything being interdependent implicates or implies love. I don't know if that made sense, did it? Did it not make sense to some people? Love implies interdependence, and interdependence implies love. But it might be possible to practice love successfully and yet not necessarily yet understand that everything is interdependent and therefore insubstantial, because nothing exists on its own. None of this person who you're feeling love towards, there is nothing there actually all by itself.

[14:04]

There's just a person which depends on everything else. And the same for all other beings and things. So love and insubstantiality go together. But sometimes love might not show you insubstantiality, whereas love is the context in which we investigate insubstantiality. And then once we realize insubstantiality of everything, or the interdependence of everything, or the emptiness of everything, then that understanding of the interdependence and emptiness blossoms as love again. So love naturally, understanding interdependence, wisdom, naturally blossoms as compassion. But we need the context of love and compassion in order to be able to face how utterly insubstantial everything is.

[15:10]

We need to love all things which may now seem substantial. We need to love our body and other bodies which seem substantial. We need to truly love our own body and other bodies. We need to truly love our bodies and all other bodies. That kind of love is the context in which we can face that this body and other bodies are inseparable and that this body is insubstantial. People, human beings, when they come to start opening their eyes to the truth of their own insubstantiality, or the insubstantiality of people that they really love or animals that they really love or plants that they really love or mountains that they really love or work that they really love, when they start to see the insubstantiality of it, when they get the first glimmerings of seeing the insubstantiality of things, they sometimes become

[16:35]

irritated or frightened. They think they have trouble like staying in this loving, open mode when the truth starts to dawn. Continuing to practice loving meditation, continuing to practice hoping for happiness for all beings and yourself, compassion joy and particularly equanimity helps you not close off to the truth which is coming. So the truth coming to you more and more clearly is a natural reward for practicing love. And then the truth sets you really free from suffering, your wish that you'd be free of suffering is now realized, and then that freedom blossoms as more love.

[17:42]

In San Francisco, we have a sitting group that meets once a week, and we're now studying the kind of practices, the kind of loving practices, the kind of practices of compassion which you do after enlightenment. So there's loving practices before enlightenment, loving practices after enlightenment, and the loving practices after enlightenment liberate you from enlightenment. So your enlightenment becomes something beyond itself, keeps going beyond itself by continuing to practice love after you have some enlightenment. So love leads to enlightenment, love is always there, and enlightenment shows you that it was always there. If you don't understand it's there, then you need to practice it until you understand there always was. When you see that it always was, you're enlightened.

[18:57]

And then, so that you don't stop loving because you're so happy that you're free, can you imagine stopping loving when you're free and happy? Why would one stop loving when one is happy and free? Why? When you're free of suffering, why would you stop loving? How could that happen? Can you imagine? Yes? That's one answer you could give, is that you open to the spaciousness and you don't know what to do with it. If you still want to do something with it, okay, then you're making it into a thing.

[19:59]

You're still trying to make the spaciousness into a thing. So the tendency to make things into things that you can get a hold of is still there, so the enlightenment still hasn't really worked yet, because you still think you could get a hold of it. a tendency to grab. When the tendency to grab is projected onto spaciousness, then spaciousness becomes a thing, which is kind of terrifying. When you really are loving, you let the spaciousness just be spaciousness, without trying to make it into a thing that you can grasp and that therefore you would fall into or that would hurt you or something. So that's a case, I would say, where you're getting a glimmering of spaciousness, of insubstantiality, but you kind of react and make it back into something called insubstantiality.

[21:04]

Pardon? Right, exactly. So you really haven't quite got there yet because you're kind of reacting to this and your mind converts this first sign of insubstantiality into another thing which becomes then nihilism. Nothingness or emptiness is not empty. Nothingness is not nothing. emptiness is the radiance of all things. Emptiness is the radiance of all things. It's the light of things. So may I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be light. That light, that lightness, is the fact that we are interdependent. And when you start to see that, you might try to grab it, and if you grab it, then it turns into something quite terrible.

[22:12]

Because a substantialized insubstantiality is worse than regular subsubstantiality. A solid, a graspable, ungraspableness is really much more terrifying than a regular graspableness. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but if you're going to grasp something, you just grasp regular things like bodies and cars and food. To grasp onto insubstantiality, which means your idea of it, is really unhealthy. But let's say you haven't grasped it. Let's say you're open to insubstantiality and you don't grasp it. You just become enlightened of it or by it or in it. You don't make it into a thing. You realize that insubstantiality has a body. Insubstantiality can walk and talk.

[23:18]

Insubstantiality can be springtime and autumn. Insubstantiality is the character of everything in the world. The world doesn't disappear. It's just that the world is... revealing its light, revealing its interdependence. The world becomes beautiful. You become happy. You are free now of grasping things because everything's so beautiful. Instead of trying to grasp them, you put your hands together and bow to them. You say thank you to everything rather than saying, give me more. When things are a little bit beautiful, you want more. But when they're really full-scale beauty, you stop, you bow down to them, and you don't dare anymore to try to grab them. Now, you know, it's kind of cute to think, well, you know, let's say you can meet the Buddha now.

[24:20]

So you have an interview with the Buddha. You go into Buddha. You say, hi, Buddha. This is great to see you. Thanks for coming back to life. for a few minutes to have a meeting with me. I'm going to take you home with me. You're mine. I'm not going to share you with the other people. Now, it's kind of cute to think that you'd do that, but maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you'd say, nice to meet you, you know, and I'm not going to try to have you all to myself. I'm just grateful to meet you. So when you practice loving, kindness, when you practice compassion, when you practice equanimity, when you practice joy, you open your eyes to how beautiful the world is. And when you see how beautiful it is, let's say anyway, you see how beautiful it is, you do not grab it But then you might try to grab that happiness of being free from grabbing.

[25:31]

You might try to grab the happiness and the freedom from being free from grabbing. You might try to grab the freedom. You didn't grab things anymore. You didn't even grab their interdependence. You just received them and their interdependence and received the beauty and the truth which sets you free from your anxiety. You're now free from anxiety, basically, for yourself anyway. But then you might try to grab that. Because although you don't try to grab things for yourself, the person, anymore, there's still some very subtle level at which you think you can still grab even freedom. You can't grab things anymore, so you're free of grabbing things and all the troubles you get into from grabbing things. But you still may think you can grab your enlightenment. So then you have to practice more love more love and more compassion for yourself and others in order to face the next and deeper level of insubstantiality.

[26:39]

And when you see that level of insubstantiality, you will no longer be able to grasp anything, not even enlightenment. So there's love before enlightenment, to set up opening to it, and there's love after it to take it deeper. Was that too abstract? It was? If you practice love fully enough, you'll be able to listen to that. It takes a lot of love to be able to listen to such talk. Just like it takes a lot of love to listen to some other kinds of talk.

[27:45]

We need to be able to listen to all the talk. doesn't mean that we don't have a response to it. Our response is something else we need to listen to. So we're listening to somebody, listening to somebody other than ourself, we're listening in a loving way, and then we have some words come up inside ourselves, we listen to those too. So we love ourself, and what we have to say and we love the other persons and what they have to say. Can I say one more thing? When you're listening to other people and yourself, and I say love what they have to say, it doesn't mean you like what they say.

[28:49]

Like, I like that. That's really cute. You don't necessarily think that. That's where equanimity is very important, to develop the ability to listen to people with some sense that whatever they're saying is the same, rather than, ooh, that was really great and that's really stupid and that's really intelligent and I like that and this is really nice and that's really bad. It doesn't mean that you don't have those feelings, but you also have some sense of it's the same. Otherwise, well, if you can't do that, then when they say certain things to you, you have trouble listening. And when certain messages come to you which are very true, when the Buddha sends a message of the reality which will set you free, you might not be able to listen to it because it You know, you might say, this is not so good, Buddha.

[29:51]

I don't want to hear this one. Yes, Beverly? If you what? Yes, yes. Yes. Did you hear what she said? So, in some sense, the first level, the first level of enlightenment has to do with seeing the Four Noble Truths. Okay? Okay? seeing the truth of suffering, and seeing the origins of suffering, and seeing that suffering, anxiety, fear, and so on, they arise depending on a belief that you as a person, for example, Beverly the person, exists by herself separately from other people and other animals, plants, and so on.

[31:10]

Your suffering comes from believing that you're separate, that you're isolated. And then as soon as you think you're separate and isolated, you can't help but grasp that separateness. And then you feel anxious. That's the origin of your anxiety. Okay? And then because you think you're separate, you think you can do something, so now you want to do something. about this suffering which is coming from thinking that you're separate. So you do what we call karma. And then you create a whole world which is a testimony to your separateness and a testimony to your unhappiness. And then you've got to do more to fix that world which you created, which is basically an insult to you. Now, Beverly says, if you became, if you saw, if you got enlightened and you saw that that belief in your separate self was no longer true, you'd be happy, you'd be free of anxiety, and you'd practice loving, all these loving practices, right?

[32:23]

It seems what? It is logical, and that's why these practices would be done, should be done after enlightenment. Okay? And they need to be done before, too. Because if you don't practice this love to yourself, you won't be able to face the fact that you're not there, really. It's kind of like if you love yourself enough, you can say, okay, okay, I feel so good because of all this love that I'm putting out and receiving. Because when you put this love out, you start to feel it coming towards you too. I feel so good, I guess I could tolerate the idea and the actuality that I'm not actually here. Okay, fine. And then when you tolerate that, when you tolerate that reality, which is a different reality from the one that you are here, really, When you tolerate that, then you get even a bigger happiness or a more thorough happiness.

[33:28]

And Beverly says, then after that, wouldn't you then continue to practice loving kindness and all this stuff? Yes. Hopefully. But you might not. Two reasons. Two reasons. Or two related reasons. One is that although you have although you no longer believe that you're isolated, you the person is isolated from the other persons, that you're interdependent with them and depend on them and they are to you, you still might think that the elements, that the conditions which make you up, that they themselves are independent and existing by themselves. Like your hair and your teeth and your history and your gender, and your mental experiences, which compose this phenomena, which give rise to this appearance called a person, you might think that they exist independently.

[34:38]

And in order to face that they don't either, that even the the conditions upon which you depend for your existence, that they themselves also do not exist independently, but they depend on other things too, to face that even deeper sense of insubstantiality requires even more continuous, continual practice of love. So love is part, love, compassion, joy, and equanimity open you to see the insubstantiality of yourself, your personhood, then continuing those practices open you and make it possible for you to accept the insubstantiality of everything. And if you have accepted the first level of insubstantiality, the first level of selflessness, but not the second,

[35:44]

then you can still apply that second kind of belief in substantiality to your happiness and to your freedom and to your enlightenment. You can even make your freedom into a little package and hold on to it. And there's still a very subtle level of anxiety going on And then again it would make sense, well since there is, then wouldn't it make sense to continue to practice loving-kindness and address it to that more subtle anxiety? The answer is yes. But sometimes people don't. So that's why we have to remind people that there is continual training in loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity after enlightenment, leading to an even deeper enlightenment. The most difficult thing to accept is that nothing is actually happening. And you need to be very loving in order to accept this total insult to all like belief in substantial existence.

[37:00]

So the first level that something's not happening is you as an independent person that's not happening. That's an appearance. It's an illusion. It's not really happening. The independence isn't happening. The appearance is happening. But the magic, the magical appearance, the magic of there being a person, that is happening, but it's not really there. It doesn't really exist. And if you believe it really exists, you suffer. Most of us do believe it really exists, so we're frightened. we're anxious, and we're miserable to the extent or as long as we believe that this magical appearance of a person really substantially exists. That's ignorance. That's ignoring the light. Each person is actually radiant, but their radiance

[38:04]

is their insubstantiality. Each person is beautifully radiant, is radiantly beautiful. Each person is radiantly beautiful. But you can't grasp that. And as soon as you make yourself or another into something you can grasp, the light and the beauty get obscured. Get obscured by being made into a package. which you can grasp as substantial. If you're loving, you can start to face that light and let go of the packaging. If you're comfortable enough through practicing loving-kindness and so on, you can dare to open your eyes. So you start with yourself You start by practicing loving kindness so you can open your eyes to what you've been closing your eyes to.

[39:07]

First of all, to the pain, to the misery, to the anxiety and fear, to the affliction, to the anger, which arise because of this belief in yourself as independent. So loving kindness is, we say, may I be free from anger, affliction, fear, and anxiety. But saying that is part of what helps you face anger, affliction, fear, and anxiety. That's the loving way to approach. It's not like May I get rid of, may I destroy fear, anxiety. May I be happy.

[40:10]

May I be peaceful. May I be light. May I feel safe and free from injury. May I be free of these anxieties and fears. As I meditate on being free of them, I become more intimate with them. When I become more intimate with them, I see what they depend on. What do they depend on? They depend on the belief in my separateness. When I become more intimate with that, I see that it's an illusion. As I become more intimate with its illusory quality, I become free of that belief and free of the anxiety. the practice of courageously facing anxiety, the practice of courageously facing our fears, is surrounded by the practice of love.

[41:36]

Love meditation surrounds the courageous entry into intimacy with the most difficult things to face. If we go into the cave where our anxiety and fear are, without bringing love with us, we'll probably just run away or fight. So did I answer your question, Beverly?

[42:50]

So which one did you hear? Yeah. Okay, so the two reasons. So you've realized some enlightenment. You've been liberated from belief in the self of the person. Okay? You've been liberated from the belief in the self of the person. You see that the person, Beverly or Reb, doesn't have an independent self. When you see that, a big covering comes away from your mind and your eyes and your heart and you feel liberated from suffering. Okay, so she says she got that one of the reasons why you might not continue to practice is because you still believe that in a substantiality of the phenomena which support the appearance of yourself.

[44:08]

Even though you see the self is not independent, you might think the phenomena are. You still may have that, that still may be a little bit of ignorance on your part, that you don't see the radiance and beauty of all the things that support yourself. That may block you from practicing love. The other thing that may block you from practicing love is the happiness and freedom which you've attained which because you still believe that even the elements of your experience can have substance, you might think that your enlightenment and your freedom and your happiness have substance, so you might grasp it. But grasping your freedom is not love. But you're so happy with your freedom from anxiety and your enlightenment, you're so happy that you say, wow, so what? You're so happy that you might say, I don't need to keep practicing love. I don't need to keep opening to deeper and deeper levels of reality.

[45:10]

This one's good enough for me. So your happiness and your freedom can become something you attach to or something you camp out in. You can camp out in your liberation. This is called Zen sickness, which means it's a sickness of success that you can rest on your laurels and not continue to practice the things which set up this wonderful victory when you finally finish your job you won't be able to camp out anymore when you see not only that your self doesn't have independent existence but all the things that your self depends on don't have independent existence even though that ancient habit of substantializing things and grasping them, the ancient habit of camping out in any reasonable campsite will still be there as an ancient possibility. You won't be able to find a campsite.

[46:11]

You won't be able to find an enlightenment that you could hold on to. You won't be able to find a happiness that you could actually grasp. You won't be able to find a freedom that you can actually be satisfied with. You're just totally... the servant of all beings and the servant of freedom and the servant of enlightenment and the servant of happiness. But you can't get a hold of any beings and you can't get a hold of any enlightenment and you can't get... It's not something, but you made it into something. So you're still anxious, actually. So the first level of enlightenment is when you see or understand or realize the selflessness or no-self of the person.

[47:26]

And when you have this kind of enlightenment, it's not that you don't see a person anymore, or even not that you don't have an ego anymore, but that you don't see the person as having an independent self. You see a person, but when you look at a person, you see everything else too. So you see that the person doesn't have an independent self. What? Can I speak up a little? You see that the person doesn't have an independent existence. Okay? And that relieves you of a lot of anxiety, a lot of pain, a lot of fear. And it's such a big relief that you may feel virtually free, enlightened, and beyond pain.

[48:31]

and love sets up this insight. Okay? But still you might believe that all the things that come to make up this person, that they have a self. So the next thing is you see, realize and so on, the selflessness and the no-self of all phenomena, or all things. So this one, the first one's called Pudgala. Pudgala, which means person, nairatmya. Have you heard the term atman?

[49:34]

Atman means self. Nairatman. Nairatmya. No atman. You realize the no-self of the purgala, the no-self of the person. That's the first level of enlightenment, the first level of removing the obscurations to enlightenment. Actually, there's actually some previous levels of obscuration that are removed before this one. So I said that when you see the selflessness of the person called yourself and the selflessness of other people, when you see that, that's the first level of obscuration to be removed. But actually, I would change it to the second to the last. There's a whole bunch of other levels of obscurations that are removed before that, that I'm not mentioning. But those are addressed by practicing love. You remove some of the grosser levels of obscuration by practicing love, and that leads to removing the obscuration which is due to the belief in the independence of the person.

[50:44]

But still you could believe there'd still be some little bit of obscuration, some little bit of ignorance, that you still might think that your hair, your teeth, your feelings, your emotions, that they were substantial. Usually people are carrying this big level of substantiality about themselves around, so they don't even notice that they think that all their experiences, all the tiny elements of their experience, they also think that they have a self. We don't notice that because we're so much into the self of the person. We know that we're into the self of the person and also the self of the things that go with the person, like the self of our car, the self of our house, the self of our family, the self of our dog. But we don't notice, because we're so much into these selves and these independent existences, that we're also into the self of our smells, our tastes, our touches, our anger, our fear.

[51:56]

We're into the self of all those things too. But they're more subtle, and the anxiety we feel around them are more subtle. So you may not notice that you'd have some trouble adjusting to the insubstantiality of your pain or your pleasure or your faith or your honesty, all these things. So this is gross, gross suffering, gross anxiety associated with this. And even this gross anxiety and gross suffering people may not know about because they're moving so fast, they're distracting themselves so heavily that they don't even feel the suffering that arises from this belief in the self of the person.

[52:57]

And once again, the funny thing is, if you practice loving-kindness, compassion and so on toward yourself and others, it helps you open up to the fact of your fear, anxiety and affliction. Which again, people might say, well gee, that doesn't sound too good. But actually it's just simply opening up to something that's already going on, which is based on your lack of enlightenment. So in some sense you could also say that practicing this love meditation helps us open up to our ignorance. Because it helps us open up to the consequences of our ignorance. If we're ignorant and we're miserable, isn't that enough problems? So if I've got these problems, do I have to, on top of that, like be aware of them? Well, no, forget it.

[54:09]

I mean, if I'm deluded, why should I have to be aware of it too? Can't I just leave me alone and let me distract myself? Why should I have to face something so terrible? Not only am I deluded, not only am I screwed up the way I think and the way I understand, but I'm also miserable because of it. Do I have to like look at that? No, I don't. Right? But that's just normal. In other words, if you want to be free of your ignorance, if you want to be free of how strangely you think and how narrowly you think and how habitually you think and how miserable you are because of the way you think, if you want to be free of that, then you have to look at this. So I guess you have to kind of like think, well, there is a possibility of being free, and there's a price of being free, and the price of being free is facing my enslavement, facing my prison, facing how I got in this mess.

[55:12]

But if it's that much of a mess, how can I face it? So that's what the love is about, is to make yourself comfortable enough so that you can face what a terrible situation you're in. so that you can fairly comfortably face the situation. If you can face the situation, then not only now you have all the problems you had before, but now you're facing the problems, which might seem like more of a problem than before you were facing them, because you might have been fairly successful at distracting yourself Even though you were distracting yourself by taking drugs and being cruel to people, you still actually distracted yourself. It was so vivid. Like, you know, some murderers say, you know, when I actually shot that guy in the face, I was really like, you know, I really didn't feel much anxiety. I felt kind of relaxed at that time. Before I actually pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, I was really scared.

[56:19]

But when I actually shot him, I just, I felt a moment of liberation. If you do bad enough things, and you move fast enough, and you're violent enough, you can actually distract yourself from how scared and anxious and miserable you are. So that's why the love is like... You know, what is it? A spoonful of medicine helps a spoonful of sugar. Honey makes the medicine go down. We like to have to like get into a huge vat of honey in order to take this medicine. This is like the most difficult medicine of all to take. is to face our pain, the full level of it, to see what it actually is and then to see what its conditions are and how it happens.

[57:21]

This is the most difficult thing for us to face and the most helpful thing for us to face. And there's two levels of facing it. And love helps us at both levels. And I just mentioned that, like in San Francisco, we're looking at the second level of facing, the more subtle level of delusion, which you face after you have seen through the first level of delusion. There's love before the first enlightenment, after the first enlightenment, and after the second enlightenment. It's just that after the second... After the second enlightenment, you're feeling love, but it's no longer for any things. You're just feeling love and joy and equanimity about insubstantial appearances. You're feeling love about things that you can't grasp anymore. You can't grasp the people.

[58:22]

You can't grasp the enlightenment. You can't grasp the Buddhism. You can't grasp the experiences. And you're okay with that. Love is insubstantial. Freedom is insubstantial. Buddha is insubstantial. Buddha is insubstantial. Delusion is insubstantial. Everything is insubstantial, including what I just said. Yes, what's your name again? Paul. Paul. Would you say it again, please? I couldn't hear you. Yes. Yes. I'm not suggesting that you visualize things and say that they're an illusion. Okay?

[59:23]

I'm saying practice love and as that practice gets more developed you feel more comfortable and you feel, for example, you're practicing the loving thought that you, you're wishing, you're aspiring that you would be free from anxiety and fear. And when you actually feel that way, when you let yourself actually feel and hope that for yourself, you feel good hoping that for yourself. Even though you're still anxious, you feel more comfortable and more loving in the situation of being anxious. So there you are, you're Paul in this soup of anxiety. But in the middle of the soup, you're generating loving thoughts for yourself and others. So you start to feel this love in the middle of the anxiety. Okay? You're not saying this anxiety is insubstantial. It's an illusion.

[60:24]

You're not concentrating on that. You're concentrating on loving thoughts, a loving feeling, a loving attitude, a joyful feeling, and an equanimous feeling in the middle of this anxiety. Okay? In other words, anxiety, not anxiety, well, they're kind of the same. you kind of get the feeling for like, yeah, there's anxiety, take it away, oh yeah, okay, be aware of it, okay, not be aware of it, okay. In that situation of developing this love, you don't say the anxiety is insubstantial, you just become more and more intimate with it, because you're more and more comfortable being in it, and you become more and more aware of it as it is. And when you see anxiety as it is, you see anxiety also is something that's insubstantial. You see it rather than telling yourself that. It seems substantial because it depends on something else. It's not all by itself a big chunk of anxiety. Anxiety can only be there if you think you're cut off from the rest of the world.

[61:29]

So you see, oh, I believe there's this idea that I'm cut off from the rest of the world. And then that's even more difficult to face than the anxiety, to actually look at that. That thought in itself isn't painful. It's just that thought is the source of the pain, is one of the key ingredients to have anxiety. But the reason why it's so hard to look at it is because we have a deep, [...] deep habit of ignoring it. We do not look at that belief in our independent existence. It's there. We're holding it. It's holding us. We're operating on that basis, but we don't look at it. So it's very hard to look at this thing which we're so unused to looking at. But if you're intimate with the anxiety because you're gradually being more and more loving, which means more and more loving means more and more willing to be where you are, more and more willing to be where you are, more and more willing to not run away from where you are, then you feel your anxiety more and more, you become more and more intimate with it, you become more and more intimate with

[62:35]

the source of the anxiety, then you see that the source of the anxiety is that you don't believe in insubstantiality and you see that you're ignoring the insubstantiality, so you see the insubstantiality, so then you're free of the anxiety. But you don't tell yourself it's insubstantial. You might kind of like, Be open to that teaching, but you don't tell yourself that, like to try to talk yourself. Well, I take that back. You can tell yourself that. If you can talk yourself into it, fine. But you should be dealing with the actuality of it. So patience is also part of this. So before and during practicing loving-kindness, we need to practice patience with this anxiety, patience with this fear, patience with the anger. Of course, if you practice patience with anger, the anger tends to dissipate.

[63:41]

And patience with the anxiety doesn't necessarily make the anxiety dissipate, but patience then followed by loving-kindness Those two together get you intimate with the anxiety and set you free from the anxiety. Yes? Does the intimacy with... That's right. That's right. And there's two phases. First is you get the insubstantiality of your personhood. Next you get the insubstantiality of all the elements which create your personhood. Yes.

[64:47]

Insubstantiality means without substance, and insubstantiality means that we're interdependent. It means that none of us exist without each other. We have no independent existence. But we do have interdependent existence. There is interdependent existence. Matter of fact, everything that exists is interdependent. So there is actually evidence for interdependent things, your evidence. There's an independent person there. There's not an isolated, independent person, no. When we believe in substantiality of anything, we're ignoring interdependence. When we believe in substantiality, we're ignoring the light of what we are. And we're used to turning, ignoring the light. It's a very deep habit to ignore the light.

[65:54]

Facing the light is very intense and takes away all of our grasping at substantiality, which we're very used to. So we have to like let go And love meditation helps us get ready to let go. We have to be comfortable to let go. We're holding on, and when we get uncomfortable, we hold on tighter. You've got an ordinary person, they're holding on to their sense of self, and they're miserable because they're holding on. Well, you make them more miserable, they hold on tighter. You make them more miserable, they hold on tighter. But if you go up to them and show them love, if you're practicing love with yourself and you show them love, they sometimes let go. So it's very hard for people to change.

[66:57]

People are like, people are holding on to themselves, trying to hold themselves together, keep this little package in, you know, together. It's always on the verge of falling apart. You know that on some level. You've even heard that it's pretty soon it's going to, like, really fall apart, and you're trying to hold it together as much as possible if you can. And because you're trying to hold it together, you're scared. And because you're scared, you're trying to hold it together. And because you're trying to hold it together, you're scared, and so on. You just keep holding, holding, scared, scared, anxious, holding, okay? You make things worse for people, what do they do? They don't say, oh, time to relax, you know? Go say, okay, you're fired, you know? Blah, blah, blah. Then they say, oh, great. No problem. You got cancer? Oh, swell. I'll just relax now. But if you show them love, and then more, [...] finally they say, geez, I can't.

[68:07]

After a while, they can't. They can't hold on anymore. The love just tells them it's stupid to hold on when you're getting this much love. So if you remind me, I have the various questions now, but if you remind me, I'll tell you some stories about that later. about how people who are scared and holding on and miserable, and because they're miserable, they're holding on, and because they're holding on, they're scared, and because they're scared, they hold on, people like that. There's some stories about them being loved and losing their grip in the face of love. Chris, did you have your hand raised? Say it louder, please. What starts as a thought? Yeah, starts as a thought.

[69:09]

Okay, so last night I was talking about starting with your body, okay? Start with your body. First of all, you sit. Check out your body. What do you got going there, you know? Like I was saying, you're sitting there and somebody walks in there. Somebody came in. Lisa came in the room and as she walked across the floor, the floor went... And I felt my body vibrating with the sound Your body is what vibrates with sound. Your body is what vibrates with light. Your body is what vibrates with smells. Your body is what vibrates with touches. Your body is what vibrates with pace. Now, there's certain parts of your body that vibrate more with taste than other parts. Like if you put something salty on your elbow, your body doesn't vibrate too much. But if you put it on your tongue, your body vibrates.

[70:35]

Nerves start jumping around, you know. chemical reactions happen. So our body is something which responds and vibrates to these dimensions. This is the body. So check out this body, which has skin surfaces, eye surfaces, ear surfaces, nose surfaces, and inside the body too, around the liver and the heart and the lungs, all these surfaces that respond. This is the body. Check it out. Okay? And then for this body, May this body be happy, peaceful, light. May this body be free of anger, affliction, fear, and anxiety. Okay? Now, what I was going to do today was to go into the other elements of our experience. There's five basic categories of our experience. The physical, the body, feelings, perceptions, various many kinds of mental formations and consciousness.

[71:41]

So we can go through each of these aggregates of our experience, which account for all of our experience, And each one, practice this loving kindness. Bring the intellectual message of wishing for the happiness, the freedom from anxiety, the freedom from fear, the freedom from affliction, the freedom from anger, bring it into the body. Bring the body and that wish together. Bring the feelings, positive, negative, and neutral feelings. Bring the loving kindness into the positive feelings. Bring the loving kindness into the negative feelings. Bring the loving kindness into the neutral feelings. Bring the compassion into the painful feelings. Bring the compassion into the neutral feelings. Bring the compassion into the pleasant feelings. Bring joy into negative feeling. Bring joy into neutral feeling. Bring joy into positive feeling. And bring equanimity into positive feeling. into negative, positive, and pleasant experiences, into the feelings.

[72:45]

Then bring it into your perceptions and so on, so that it pervades your entire experience. Now, even without intentionally bringing the wish, the aspiration that you would be happy that you would be peaceful, that you would be light, even without bringing the aspiration, that you would be free from anger, affliction, fear, and anxiety, even without bringing that into your feelings directly by juxtaposing whatever feeling you have with that wish Even without doing that, if you just do it with your body, it may spill over into your feelings. Because your feelings are right there. But we can also intentionally move this meditation over into the awareness of the feelings.

[73:48]

That may in some cases, facilitated. Or some people may feel like it's not spilling over into this area. So let's go over and look at that area and then bring this love meditation into that area of your experience, which I was going to do at some point today. Because the way it feels to bring this love meditation into some areas looks different and functions different than in other areas. Dan? Don? Is a good definition of substance that which has independent existence? That which has independent existence. So you say a good definition of substance is that which has independent existence, right? If something had independent existence, it would be substantial. If something existed all by itself, wouldn't that be like really something? Something? And in fact, when we feel like we exist by ourselves, we feel like, boy, this is really something.

[74:56]

So we can't help but grab it when we've got something there. So we grab it. And when we grab it, then we start getting whipped around all over the place. Yes, yes, and yes. Yes. Yes. So I talked about there's two ways to go through the Eightfold Path. So the Eightfold Path is right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

[76:00]

So the first way of going through the Eightfold Path is what's called the Worldly Eightfold Path, or the Mundane Eightfold Path. That means you go through the Eightfold Path and you do these various practices, these eight aspects of practice, you do them from the point of view of still believing that you independently exist. You still think, I'm Brecht and I'm practicing Right View. Here I am existing independent of Richard and I'm practicing right thinking. I'm practicing right speech. I'm practicing right action. I'm practicing right livelihood. I'm practicing right effort. I'm practicing right mindfulness. And I'm practicing right concentration. It's called the mundane Eightfold Path. And that practicing the Eightfold Path from the perspective of an independent person is very meritorious.

[77:04]

It's beneficial. And the merit comes back to the person, to the one who did it, who did those things. So if you think you practiced the Eightfold Path, then the merit of practicing the Eightfold Path will come back to you. Now if you're trying to practice the Eightfold Path but you don't, then the demerit will come back to you. Okay? But after you do that whole path, it culminates in seeing that it was an illusion that you did it. That really you didn't do it. That you and the Eightfold Path happened. The Eightfold Path will help you realize that you are happening depending on everything else. And the Eightfold Path is happening depending on everything else. Then you go through the eightfold path again, but this time you don't do these practices. It's just that you and the practices are rising interdependently. So now there's right view. Now this is the super mundane eightfold path.

[78:06]

This is the selfless eightfold path. and maybe take two times around. And this path is also meritorious, but the merit doesn't come back to you because you didn't do it. There's merit, but it's going all over the place. It's very good, but you didn't do it, so the merit doesn't come back to you. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the first time, when the Buddha talks about the first time of going through the Eightfold Path, the Buddha says it's meritorious, it's beneficial, And the merit comes back to the author of the actions, of these good actions, and is tainted. The first way of going through the Eightfold Path is tainted, is tainted by the belief that you exist independently of other beings. It's tainted, and it kind of, you could say, it leaks, or you could say also it sucks. It's still practicing. Even though you're doing this wonderful Buddhist practice, you're still practicing on the level of getting something, of gaining something, or losing something.

[79:12]

I gain. You do gain. That's the world you're seeing. You're in the world where you gain something, you get the merit, or you lose something. You gain and lose. You're still in a world of gain and loss. It's still karmic. Second time around, you've seen that there isn't a you separate from other beings so you could get something from them or lose something to them. You know, just like with some people, you give them a dollar and you don't feel like you lost anything, right? Because you feel like, well, you're me. So you don't lose anything and maybe they think they gained something, but you know. Like with your kids, you maybe feel like you give money to your kids, you don't feel like you lost anything. Now maybe they feel like they gained something because they think they're separate from you even though you don't think you're separate from them. They've got to think they're separate from you in order to get out of the house, right? So it's part of the deal to get out of the house is you've got to think you're separate from your parents so all the money you get from them is a game to you.

[80:16]

So that's why you want more. More and more money, more and more money. Dad, money. give. But dad doesn't think he's losing anything, right? So in that sense, dad's enlightened when he gives to his kids and he doesn't think he's losing anything. That's what enlightenment's like. And also when they give it back to you, you don't feel like you gained something. So the Eightfold Path has these two ways of being practiced. And love is in the background of the practice all the way through. Love is what helps you do the Eightfold Path in such a way that you see that even though you're doing it, you're still anxious because you're doing it. And you do all these good practices and finally they all help you see that you doing them is the problem. that you by yourself doing them is a problem.

[81:18]

Even though they're very good things, part of the merit of doing them is the merit of doing them helps you see more and more clearly that the problem is that you're doing it. And love makes it possible for you to continue doing them even though you're so embarrassed about the whole situation. Here I am doing Buddhism and, you know, I still think I'm Mr. Big, you know, doing Buddhism. It's so embarrassing. But I got to admit that's what I'm doing. And I'm loving myself enough to be able to admit I'm really, I'm really deluded. I really got a strange view of this whole thing. I mean, I think I'm doing Buddhism all by myself, basically. The Buddhas are out there, you know, trying to help me, but basically they're not really helping me that much. I've got to do it all by myself. And it's really, you know, I appreciate a little bit that they told me to do the practice, but basically I'm doing it on my own. They're not really helping me. Not really.

[82:19]

Now, if I can't do the practice, then maybe they're hindering me, but, you know. No. No. So it gets more and more embarrassing until finally you see it ain't that way. It ain't that way. And when you see that it ain't that way, you see how it is or you see a different truth. And the truth of seeing that you're not doing it by yourself is a truth of happiness. The truth of doing it by yourself is a truth of misery. We believe that we can do things by ourselves, so we're unhappy. When we see that we're doing things together with everyone, we're happy. But still, there could still be that subtle belief that those who are helping us are the things that support us, that they have inherent existence. So we have to even see that there's not even substantial support, that our supports aren't substantial either. What's supported is not substantial, and what's supporting it is not substantial. And the results of realizing insubstantiality, enlightenment itself is not substantial.

[83:26]

There is not actually something there. Any other? Oh, then, yes. Yeah, number one and number two. You have so many questions. It wasn't a woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she knew what to do. Yeah, right. Mm-hmm. like losing a relationship, and feeling the wanting and the grasping, and saying no to someone who's out of power.

[84:30]

And I started to notice, oh, I don't have that, what do we call it, vanity kind of feeling. Oh, I don't have that, and I need to stop it. And to me, it's a bit unholy. You know, I was so good at talking about watching movies. You know, what I try to do is to say, I'm not alone. I love myself, and it's whatever it is that I feel. And my sense of practical wealth brings me down to this personal emotional state. And that was the most difficult thing to do. And if I knew I wasn't alone, then I wouldn't get into any issues at all. But the reality is that they're there, so I need to I love myself while I am. I'm not quite enlightened in that, but know that. So if you feel abandoned, if you feel isolated, if you feel cut off, you feel anxious, you feel afraid, okay?

[85:38]

So you practice loving kindness towards yourself. And the more you practice loving kindness towards yourself, the more you're going to want to practice towards others. the more thoroughly you actually wish yourself happiness, joy, and peace, freedom from the very anxiety which you're feeling, the more you let yourself hope well for yourself, hope for goodness for yourself, even while you're having trouble, the more you do that in the context of having these troubles, the more you're willing to do it for others. Even though you've got these problems, you still wish yourself to be free of them. You know they're there. Because if you don't, again, you start with where you are. If you don't allow yourself to feel your anxiety, that's not very loving. And the more you allow yourself to feel okay about wishing that you'd be free of anxiety, the more you'd be able to feel it.

[86:41]

And the more you feel it and continue to let yourself wish yourself well, the more you'll feel it, until finally you let yourself be fully as anxious as you are. The more you love yourself, the more you give love to yourself and wish well for yourself, the more you can feel your anxiety. And the more you can dare to wish for other people that they'll be free and face how unhappy they are. Sometimes it's difficult to even look how miserable somebody is, but the more you want, the more you love them, the more you can face their pain. The more you give love to yourself, the more you can face your pain. The more you give love to others, you can face their pain. So it's possible, if you really love someone and they're really, really in tremendous pain, that you can be right there with them and smile. So the Buddha can be right next to us when we're in our most extreme pain and be smiling. It's not like, oh, I'm so glad you're suffering.

[87:42]

It's that I'm happy to love you while you're suffering. I'm happy to be with you in your suffering. And the more you can love yourself in your suffering and wish yourself well in your suffering, the more you can help others. And the more you can help others, the more you realize that they're helping you. The more you can love others, the more you can realize they're loving you. So the more you can give out love, the more you feel it coming back. And if you can give it out, it's hard for you to believe it's coming back. So again, with our children, sometimes they're so unable to give out love towards us, they can't believe how much we love them. We say, I love you, and they say, yeah, sure, I mean, I know, I understand. But when you really love someone, you can believe that they love you. And when you love everybody, you can believe that everybody loves you.

[88:46]

When you love yourself fully, you can dare to love others. When you love everybody, you feel everybody's loving you back. Everybody. Everybody. Like when I was a kid, my parents were loving parents But I couldn't realize it because I didn't love them enough. I didn't have the concept of loving them, really. I loved them a little. But not enough to realize how much they loved me. And I remember they used to say to me, Rebbe, I love you so much. And I'd say, oh yeah, okay, that makes sense. You act like it, you know. But when I saw my daughter being born, as soon as I saw her come out, I thought, now I understand what my parents meant when they said, I love you. Because it was an entirely different species of love.

[89:48]

Whole other dimensions came in that I never felt before. And that's one of the great advantages of being a parent is to feel that kind of love. And you can feel that kind of love towards not just your own kids, but everybody's kids and everybody. And then you can feel more love coming to yourself. So in some sense, a kid can't feel the parent's love until they're a parent. which is one of the nice things about growing up, is that you can understand love more fully. And when you understand love fully, you understand everybody, everybody is loving you. Actually, what's going on is that love is flowing in and out of us all the time. It's running through all of us. It doesn't stop someplace. But if you don't get with the program and do the part of where it's coming out of you and do the part where it's coming from yourself back to yourself, if you block any of those things where you're kind of like there, you're there to give yourself love or not.

[90:53]

You are giving yourself love, so get with it. If you don't love yourself in all these ways, you're missing out on what's going on. When you get with it, you're getting closer to reality. Then you can also start putting it out towards others. And when you can really put it out towards others and towards yourself, you realize they're putting it out towards you. Even if they say something different. Even if they don't agree. Even if they're not with the program that's happening to them. No, I don't love you. Well, you just don't fall for that. You see the love coming right through. They say, no, I don't love you. You see little Buddhas coming out of their mouth. But, you know, it's interesting. I've told this story over and over, but

[91:55]

This person who was born, and I saw her born and who I loved, as she started to grow up, she started calling me insulting names. So here's this person who's sending out these insulting names to me. You are, I forgot what she said, but anyway, you are the worst, you are the whatever, you are blah, blah, blah, bad, bad, bad dad, you know. so these words are coming out and this is the same these words are coming out and this is the same person who used to like send fluids you know out of her mouth into my face and when those fluids came out of her mouth into my face I thought geez we have vomit in my face and I don't mind amazing I'm so surprised I don't mind So now these words are coming out, I didn't mind.

[92:59]

This person was trying to get to and have some effect upon God. Her father, this great whatever this is, she was trying to see if she could have an effect, hurt this great being. And the great being looked back and said, no, you can't hurt me because I understand you're just saying you love me. That's the way it was. And then she'd get even more frustrated and try harder.

[93:33]

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