healthy children. And for some reason or other I feel joy to see you. Thank you for coming and thank you to your parents for taking such good care of you. You really look healthy. I wanted to tell you a story that once upon a time in India India is a big country in Asia that has now more than a billion people and thousands of years ago there was a boy or a girl.

[01:03]

I don't know for sure if it was a boy or a girl. But she was born into a very nice family. Her parents loved her very much and took good care of her and made her very comfortable. And her family was... a warrior prince family. So he was a prince or a princess and he learned martial arts. He learned to ride horses and shoot bow and arrow and his parents loved him very much and he was very healthy and very happy. And he grew up and he got married And then one day he went outside of his very comfortable family estate and he saw some people that were sick, that were poor, that were hungry, that were begging for food.

[02:18]

And some people, even he saw some people dying and some people who were dead. And that was the first time he actually really saw people in pain and suffering and afraid. His parents made him so comfortable he didn't ever see any pain. Then finally he saw some people who were really hurting, really suffering. And he felt that he really wanted to help these people. He wanted to find some way to help these suffering people. So he decided to leave his home and go and search for some way to help suffering people. And he searched all over for teachers who could help him find a way that would help suffering people, help people.

[03:19]

And finally he found a way. a way where he felt his own suffering was released or relieved. And he understood that if other people could understand this, they also would be free of suffering. And what he found out was that we are not separate from each other. He found out that we're all in the same family, that we're all very, very much one living being. And he understood that and he was relieved of suffering and he understood that if other people would understand this and live with the understanding that we are not separate from each other, they too would be happy. So he... he... he...

[04:24]

He thought although people would be happy if they understood this, he thought people don't want to hear this. They don't want to hear that they're not separate from other people. So even though I'd like to tell them, they probably won't pay attention to me. So he didn't tell them. But then people asked him to say, so he said. And when he told them, they did become free of suffering and they did teach others. And now this teaching that he gave in India thousands of years ago has been brought down over the centuries to this temple. This is a Zen temple. And we try to teach people, we try to help people understand that other people, taking care of other people, being concerned for the happiness of other people is the way to be happy. When I was older than most of you, there's one kind of big boy here.

[05:31]

How old are you? 12. When I was your age, I was a naughty boy. And I was a naughty boy because my hero was Elvis Presley. And I noticed that he was kind of a naughty boy and everybody liked him. Another hero I had was Marlon Brando. when I was 12 years old on the waterfront I wanted to be like that guy and I got a lot of attention for being a naughty boy and then I met a man a big man who loved me and when he was a young man when he was a boy of 12 he also was naughty And he told me how naughty he was and I thought, oh yeah, he was as naughty as me. He knew about being naughty and how fun it is sometimes.

[06:35]

Yeah. And how much attention you get when you're naughty. Get lots of attention from your mommy and daddy and school teachers. And in my case, even the police. At 12 years old, the police gave me some attention. And they put me, they took me to jail when I was 12 years old. And they took my fingerprints when I was 12 years old. And they took me to a cell. And on the way by the cell, some women were in the cell and they reached out to touch me. They thought I was cute. They didn't see other 12-year-olds. And they put me in the room, and they gave me a bologna sandwich, and I thought it was really delicious. And there was a Native American in the cell with me, and I thought, how cool, I'm in a cell with a Native American. Very exciting to be a naughty boy.

[07:44]

Yeah. But then my mother came to get me and she was so unhappy that I stopped thinking that this was so good. She was very unhappy. And then this big man who loved me, who lived in my apartment building, came to talk to me about this. And he told me what a bad boy he was when he was young. And he said to me, and he was a big man, he was six foot four and weighed 240 pounds. And he was 1946 National Heavyweight Golden Globes Champion. And he said to me, you know, I love you. And being bad is easy, easy. But you know what's hard? Being good. And I thought, okay, if that's hard, I'll be good.

[08:46]

And from then on, I tried to be good, but it's hard to be good. It's easy to forget. So the Buddhas come to the world to teach us, to remind us, to encourage us to be good, which means to do things that make other people happy. Like don't go to jail because it doesn't make your mommy happy. Yeah. Do things that make your daddy happy and your mommy happy. Do things that make your brothers happy and your sisters happy. But it's hard to do that, isn't it? So we need to remind ourselves. Can you stand another story? This is another story. A story about, you know what this is? It's a pumpkin. It's a pumpkin squash. It's a squash, a pumpkin squash. We grow it here at this Green Dragon Farm, Green Dragon Zen Temple, where we grow squashes.

[09:55]

Once upon a time, I went down to the field and I saw the squashes in the field getting big and fat like this. And the squashes were arguing with each other. They were fighting. They were angry at each other. I hate you, Mr. Squash. I hate you too. Move over. I don't want to. They were fighting about many things. And I said, this is silly. You squashes fighting? That doesn't make any sense. Sit still. So the squashes sat still like this. I said hold still be quiet and they quieted down for a little while I don't know why they followed my instruction maybe because they knew I used to be a bad boy so they sat still and they calmed down and then I said now boy and girl squashes reach up and touch the top of your head so they did

[11:06]

And I said, do you find something up there? And they say, yeah, what is this? I said, see this little thing here? It's sticking up here. This is the end of a vine. It's a stem, yeah. And the stem connects to a vine. And I said, feel the vine and see where it goes. And they felt the vine and they found out the vine goes to the other squashes. And they realized that they were all one huge plant. that they were brothers and sisters. And then they stopped fighting each other because they realized they were all one big family. So, I just wanted to ask you, before you go, I wanted to ask you if you wanted to... If you wanted to help your brothers and sisters, if you wanted to help your mommy and daddy, if you want to help them be happy, I ask you that.

[12:20]

Do you? Do you want to help your brothers and sisters? Do you want to help your daddy and mommy? No? Okay, so that's what I'm asking you. And then I have one more question for you before you go, and that is, how many people do you want to have in your family? Ten thousand. Two hundred? Ten thousand. I hear ten thousand. What? A million. I hear a million. Six million. I hear six million going once. 999 million. Do you all want that? Yes? You want one?

[13:21]

Okay. I hear it. 999 million going once. Going twice. Going three times. Okay. That's the biggest family so far. And if you want a family that big, then you're like the Buddha. The Buddha wants a really big family. Excellent. Okay, thanks for sitting still and being such beautiful children. And if you want to go, it's okay. I wanted to bring up the issue of suffering and caring for suffering beings to the children and I called Reverend Schrader to see if she thought that that would be too much for them and she thought it would be okay. So I hope it was all right for the children to be offered this information of suffering beings.

[14:34]

They seem to actually understand and be a little uncomfortable with it, which seems appropriate. But they hung in there quite well. And I wish to continue the topic of our family. Zen may not be well known for being a tradition of a big family. But to me, it really is. It's a family tradition and it's a tradition of family. It's just that the family is a very big family. The family of Zen is the family of all beings. Seeing these beautiful children and And I remember just the other day, I was up in the mountains here, and I came over the mountain and I saw the valley, the valley of Mill Valley.

[15:48]

And I was struck, as I often am, of how fortunate it is that people can live in such a beautiful place and be so comfortable. It's really wonderful. And then I descended the mountain. And I looked up the word descend. It means to down climb. To down climb. Descend. To climb down. I climbed down the mountain. When I got to sea level I saw people. Some people walking but I also saw people in wheelchairs begging. And I saw a man in a wheelchair, who was not begging. He was just going along the street. He was a young man, but he really looked like he was suffering. He really looked like he was in pain, rolling his wheelchair.

[16:52]

And I thought of one of the beat poets named Lou Welch, who wrote a poem about that big rock out at Muir Beach. He calls it wobbly rock. That rock, when the surf really hits it hard, it seems to wobble. I don't know if it really does, but it looks like it wobbles when the surf really hits it. He wrote a poem about that. But he also said, I don't know if it was prose or poetry, but he said one time he was walking along the streets of San Francisco and he saw an African-American man sitting on the steps of some house with his head in his hands, And Lou Welch said, if I see one more person like that, I'm out of here. He just couldn't stand to see the suffering of this world. And I don't know what happened, but not too long after that, he did disappear. No one knows where he went.

[17:59]

Seems likely that he just took a walk into the Sierras. He couldn't stand the pain. of this world. But it is possible in the midst of this world of suffering, it is possible to aspire to help suffering beings and to help them and to help them and to help them until they are actually not just helped but actually enlightened and liberated from the suffering that comes from not understanding deeply that there's just one family and we're in it and everybody is our brother and sister and everybody is our dear child and grandchild and everybody is our mother and father and what a joy to be devoted to them even while they're suffering and what a joy to learn a teaching which will liberate them which might liberate them which is

[19:31]

which we have stories which say that if we do this practice beings will become free of fear and anxiety and selfishness and hatred. It's possible that we feel like, I would like, I actually would like to understand so that I could help all beings. even though this would be hard, I would like to try. I wish to realize enlightenment for the welfare of all beings. This can happen to a living being. And this Zen temple is one of the places which is devoted to helping people have this aspiration and take care of it and realize it.

[20:35]

And somebody, a person who wishes to attain correct, authentic understanding of reality in order to help all beings, we sometimes call that a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva, an enlightening being. a being who's trying to enlighten others and in the process of enlightening others is developing enlightenment. And one becomes a bodhisattva if one has this aspiration and takes care of it. I don't know how many of us have sometimes felt, yes, I would like to understand so that I could help people. That that aspiration, that wish, is the seed of enlightenment, the seed of what we call Buddhahood, enlightenmenthood. But as I've said over and over, if we don't take care of this seed, if we don't take care of this aspiration, it will not be realized.

[21:47]

So there's the aspiration and then there's the caring for it. And the caring for it is to train the living being, the human who has a history of selfishness, the sentient being who has a history of feeling separate from others, to train this being so that they can take care of this wish and actualize it. So this year it just turns out that so far there's been four talks here on Sundays and they've all been dedicated to how to take care of the aspiration to live for the welfare of all living beings. All the talks have been based on the aspiration to treat all beings as though they were your dear family.

[22:53]

Even though they may have problems and be mean to you, they are still your precious family and you wish to help them in the best possible way and you want to develop a deep understanding so that you can do that. And we have brought up a little bit about the basic training methods to train a living being who wishes to serve other living beings in this way. And the training method that we brought up is the threefold ethics of an enlightening being. These teachings of these threefold ethics come to us in various ways, but one of the ways they come to us is from an Indian bodhisattva named Asanga who lived in the fourth century.

[24:04]

And this human being This great human being said that he had a relationship with another, he didn't say human being, but another enlightening being who is going to be the next Buddha. It's called Maitreya Bodhisattva or Maitreya Buddha. This human being living in India, there wasn't an India then, but living on that continent, before they had like Indian citizenship, this person living there, somehow developed a relationship with this great spiritual teacher and received these teachings of bodhisattva precepts from this teacher and has then wrote them down and those teachings have been transmitted and taken care of for 1600 years and the central message of the ethics training of bodhisattvas is these three

[25:06]

This threefold ethics, which again is the ethics of restraint, the ethics of assembling all wholesome activities, and the ethics of maturing and benefiting all beings. Those three ethics. The first one is the basis of the other two. The first one is the purifying precept, so that the other two will be pure. They're called, in our tradition now, they're called the three pure Bodhisattva precepts. And they're purified by the first one, which restrains something. What does it restrain? Well, it restrains impurity. What kind of impurity? Well, it restrains the impurity of trying to get something from life. It restrains the impurity of trying to avoid losing something in life.

[26:11]

What does it not restrain? What is it trying to promote? It's trying to promote being present. It's trying to promote being in the present moment and not getting distracted by gain and loss, by likes and dislikes. If gain arises... It's to restrain yourself from leaning into it. Just say, hi, gain. I'm here. Good morning. If loss arises, you're just present with it. You don't push it away. You're friendly towards it. You're just upright and quiet and still with loss. If likes arise... you're just present with them. If dislikes arise, you're just present with them. You don't get involved in likes and dislikes. You're training yourself in the presence of love. You're training yourself in a love which is presence, which isn't trying to get anything from life.

[27:20]

You're training yourself in purifying your love. And then with this purified presence, this purified love, then you can start practicing generosity, conscientiousness, carefulness, gentleness, patience, enthusiasm to do all kinds of good things, concentration, and wisdom. And you can also go to help people without concern for gaining anything or losing anything. You can help people without being distracted by whether you like them or dislike them. You can love people you dislike, and you can love people you like. You can love people without attaching to them, even if you like them a lot. You can like them a lot, but not lean into a lot of liking. Just, hello, a lot of liking. Hello, very little liking. Hello, below average liking.

[28:25]

You're just present. You've been trained at the first bodhisattva training method of presence. So now you can do the second method of developing all kinds of practices which make enlightenment and also developing all beings because enlightenment is concerned with benefiting beings. These are the threefold trainings of an enlightening being. And we have in this temple and we practice at this temple a ceremony of initiating people into these trainings. Some people wish to be enlightening beings and at a certain point they say, I would like to receive initiation so I can enter the training in these threefold bodhisattva ethics.

[29:29]

And the way we do this ceremony, I have discovered happily, is very similar to the way a sangha teaches to do the ceremony back in the fourth century India. I am happy to see an amazing concordance, one-heartedness, between the 4th century Indian Bodhisattva tradition and now the 21st century U.S. Bodhisattva Zen practice initiation. And I might share with you some of these details. I don't know. We'll see. I'd like to. But before I do, I just want to say that another thing strikes me, another thing that makes me happy is it's not that I... The way we practice Zen here is very different in a lot of ways from the way people practice the Bodhisattva great vehicle in India

[30:52]

1,600 years ago. Very different. For example, we speak English here a lot. They didn't speak English, I don't think, the way we do in India. Now they speak English in India, but not the way we do. They have a different accent. But back then, I don't think there was much English being spoken because there wasn't any English anyplace. But that's another story. Sometimes Tibetan Buddhist practitioners look at Zen practitioners and I've heard they sometimes say, that's nice, but I don't know if it's, it doesn't look like Buddhism. And sometimes Southeast Asian people look at Zen and they say, gee, that doesn't look like Buddhism. And sometimes Japanese Zen Buddhists look at Tibetan people and say, that doesn't look like Buddhism.

[31:56]

different Buddhists look at each other and they actually, sometimes they don't recognize a family similarity. That can be the case. Sentient beings sometimes meet somebody, they look in their face and they don't see a family similarity. Sometimes they don't see it. Sometimes human beings do not notice that they're in the same family. Sometimes Buddhists do not notice they're in the same family as other Buddhists. It can happen. It seems to happen. Sometimes Buddhists might look at Muslims and think these are not our family and vice versa. So I'm just very happy to say that right now at Green Gulch, there is an Islamic group practicing their way over in the Wheelwright Center. They feel welcome here, I think. And we look at them and I think we feel they are our family.

[32:59]

And their style of practice has a different form. But they feel like they're basically in our family. I don't know if they think they're in our family, but they must somewhat feel that way because they feel they can come here and practice. I don't want them to become Buddhists. I don't want Buddhists to become Muslims. I want everybody to realize that we're in one family. And not just all humans are in one family, but all living beings, all humans and non-humans, or all non-humans and humans are one family. That's what I want because I think that is what will bring happiness to this world. I want to briefly mention something which will take, which not take, but which I will give.

[34:14]

I want to mention something that will give an opportunity for a lifetime of meditation. And it is a concordance between the body of Buddha or the bodies of Buddha and these three pure bodhisattva precepts of ethics. There is a correspondence between the bodies of Buddha and these three pure precepts of training the mind of enlightenment. And the concordance is that the three bodies of Buddha are called in Sanskrit, if you excuse me, ready? Dharmakaya Buddha, Sambhogakaya Buddha, Nirmanakaya Buddha. That's Sanskrit, I guess. Dharmakaya Buddha means true body of enlightenment. Sambhogakaya means bliss body of enlightenment.

[35:18]

Also reward body of enlightenment. And Nirmanakaya Buddha means transformation body of Buddha. So those are the three bodies of Buddha. And they go with these three precepts. The precept of training in presence, the precept of restraining, leaning into gain and loss in this life, that precept is the true body of Buddha. Presence Presence. A love that is just present and not trying to get anything or afraid of losing anything. That kind of presence is the true body of Buddha. Training in that way is training in the true body of Buddha. That body has no beginning or end.

[36:23]

Has no coming or going. Training in presence also means not leaning into beginning and ends. It means not leaning into coming and going, just presence. Human beings, living beings, are into beginnings and endings. That's accepted, but we're training ourselves in letting go of beginnings and endings, letting go of past and future, letting go of gain and loss, letting go of coming and going, and in that realm of presence where there's no coming and going, that is the true body of enlightenment. And that body is the basis for the other bodies. And that precept is the basis for the other precepts. The next body is the bliss body. It's the body of doing the practices, the wholesome practices. Doing wholesome practices is... bliss. It's also called the reward body because when you do these wholesome practices, you get a reward.

[37:29]

When you live without trying to get anything, you get a reward. You get great happiness when you practice generosity and ethics and patience and enthusiastically work for the welfare of beings and concentration and wisdom. You get a That's bliss. That's the bliss body, and that's the second bodhisattva training method, based on the first one. The bliss body is based on the true body. And then the third body, the transformation body, is the body of enlightenment which gets transformed into whatever would help people. Not people, whatever would help any kind of being. The first one has no coming and going, no beginning and ending. The first precept has no coming and going, no beginning and ending. The true body of Buddha has no coming and going, no beginning and ending. But the second body of Buddha has a beginning, but no ending.

[38:34]

the beginning is when you begin to practice generosity when you begin to practice generosity that's the beginning of bodhisattva training that's the beginning of the bliss body of buddha the beginning of the bliss of enlightenment is giving then to be ethical to be careful and vigilant all the time not all the time each moment to be careful of this moment to be cautious and careful and gentle in everything you do. That's as a beginning. And that's the beginning of the bliss body of Buddha. That body, those practices have beginnings. But once they start, they never end. Once you start giving, that will never stop. It may have interruptions. And we have a practice for interruptions called confession and repentance. But it never ends once it starts.

[39:38]

It's unstoppable. And this is great bliss. And there's a transformation body. It has a beginning and it has an end. The precept of working for the benefit of beings has beginnings and endings. May I help you across the street? As a beginning. Are you okay now? Yes. That has an end. Each act you do in service of a living being has a beginning and an end. So the body of Buddha can be transformed into things that happen for a little while with a particular person in a particular way. And then that's that. And then another one. And [...] again, all those practices are based, if it's pure practice of serving beings, it's based on the precept of presence. These are practices, these are bodhisattva training methods which were given in the fourth century in India.

[40:51]

They're given in Tibet, they're given in China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and now they're given in the United States, Hawaii, including Hawaii. They're given in South America, they're given in Europe, they're given in Africa, and they're now given in India again. These are the Bodhisattva precepts. And the way they're given, the ceremony by which they're given, the way it was given in the fourth century has, as I said, for me, amazing similarities, amazing concordance, the way we do it now. What time is it? Eleven? Oh, two. 1102.

[42:02]

Well, now I come to a kind of a big concordance, which I don't know how much I should talk about it, but I think I should mention it. The big concordance, not the big concordance, but a big concordance. Well, one I've already mentioned is that in the fourth century, when they initiated bodhisattvas into these practices, they had these three practices, which we have today here. Same three pure precepts. But there's another concordance, which is a kind of a startling aspect to some people when they come to the initiation ceremonies here. So quite a few of you have not come to initiation ceremonies here, I guess, right? So we have these bodhisattva initiation ceremonies where people receive these precepts of training. They ask for them and we give them in a ceremony.

[42:58]

And we invite human beings who are not necessarily receiving these precepts, friends and relatives of the aspirant bodhisattva, they're invited to come and witness. And also other people who have already received the precepts are invited to come and witness the person making this commitment in the process of initiation into these vows, into these training methods. I personally feel all of you are invited to these ceremonies. If you want to come and witness them, they're usually announced beforehand, you can come and watch them and witness people making a commitment to these training methods so that they can realize the bodhisattva aspiration. So that part's easy. I mean, that part you understand.

[43:59]

You would go and watch. Or you would be doing the ceremony and your friends and relatives would be watching and your co-practitioners would be witnessing, right? So that's one kind of witnessing. Like a wedding, when you ask people to come and witness the initiation into the practice of marriage and support you in the vows you make to each other. in this hard practice of being a good husband or a good wife, a good spouse, a good espouser of love. And this ceremony that we do is, well, and also in wedding ceremonies, sometimes some other people are invited to come and attend. Sometimes God is invited to come and attend, I guess. And in our Bodhisattva initiation ceremony, at the beginning, we do an invocation.

[45:00]

And a lot of people maybe just listened to it and said, hmm. Actually, some people said, oh, they're saying something in Sanskrit. That's cool. What we say is, now, at the beginning of the initiation ceremony, we invoke the presence and compassion of our ancestors and But actually we're invoking not just the presence and compassion of our ancestors, we're inviting the presence and compassion of our current, in the present, supporters throughout the universe. We're making an invitation to infinite support. And we say the names of our invitees. And we start off by saying something like, homage to the Dharmakaya Buddha. We pay homage and we invite the true body of Buddha to come to the ceremony.

[46:08]

We invite the bliss body of Buddha to come to the ceremony. We invite the transformation body of Buddha to come to the ceremony. which is the same as saying we invite the Bodhisattva precepts. We invite the training methods to come to the ceremony so we can give the training methods. The training methods are things that we can use to train our deluded mind into enlightenment, but the training methods are also living realities throughout the universe. They're out there. and they can invite them to come and support us to receive them. So we're actually receiving training methods, which is the same as we're actually receiving the Buddha. We're sitting here saying, please come, Buddha, which is the same as saying, please come, methods of training of living beings. And that, if you think about it, is, well, to me, if you think about it, you might be like me when I think about it.

[47:15]

It's astounding that we would do something like that here. And we also invite the future Buddha. We invite Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of love, the Buddha of loving kindness. We invite that Buddha to come. We invite Asanga's teacher to come. We invite Shakyamuni Buddha to come, the founder in India. We invite all of our ancestors to come. We invite our founder to come to support us to be present and practice this way. And they did the same thing back in the fourth century. Isn't that marvelous that we do what they did? And then at the end of the ceremony, something else happens which, again, people don't usually come up to me afterward and say, what was that?

[48:20]

But I guess, and I'm saying this stuff to them, which I'll say to you now, and I think some of these people probably think I'm really weird to say this, or like, I don't know what. But anyway, I'm often surprised that we have this in our ceremony. Often. Almost every time I go, wow, here we go again. And what I'm saying to you is that today, I'm sharing you with my delight that I find out that in the 4th century, at the end of the ceremony, they say pretty much the same thing we did, of course in a different language and so on. They say kind of the same thing we do now here in the 21st century today. central of the universe. So what they said in the fourth century was something like, at the completion of commitment in the bodhisattva initiation ceremony, how does it go?

[49:26]

How does it go? Oh, yeah. When this commitment to these ethical practices, when these training methods is completed, it says, the very nature of things is that. The way things actually are is that. What? Is that there's some sign that that this completion has occurred, some sign, and that sign appears all over the universe. And enlightening beings and Buddhas all over the universe see the sign. The sign of what? It's a sign... It's not the actual completion of the ceremony. It's a sign that comes to them when the ceremony is completed. And when they see that sign, they know that someplace, and actually the sign may actually have the location, they know that, for example, on the planet Earth, for example, in Green Gulch, Green Dragon Temple, some person or persons have just received the Bodhisattva precepts.

[50:49]

In the fourth century they said that when people receive these precepts, a sign is seen throughout the universe by enlightening beings who have also received these precepts. They see that somebody has received the precepts in another world. And again, maybe they know actually which world it is. For example, this world of suffering, somebody has received these precepts. That's what they said in the fourth century. That's what Asanga said. That's what Maitreya Buddha told him. Isn't that a stretch? But that's what they said in the fourth century, apparently. In boundless, infinite realms, boundless, infinite enlightening beings and Buddhas are seeing this sign that some human being on this planet has received these precepts from someone.

[51:55]

Not they didn't get it themselves, they received the precept from somebody else who had received them from somebody else who had received them from somebody else. In other words, all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha, this transmission of these training methods to make Buddhas, And now they're receiving them. And all over the universe, enlightening beings who have also received these precepts and realized them by practicing them, witness it. So there's a people in the room witnessing it. And the beings we invited witness it. And they feel in their hearts great love for this person who has received these precepts. And they say, this is our comrade, this is our brother, this is our sister, this is our son, this is our daughter. And they are, from then on, giving their loving support to the person so they can practice these.

[53:02]

Because nobody can practice these by themselves. We need our human friends to support us. Just like in a wedding, you ask your human friends to support you to do this challenging thing of staying with this person through thick and thin, etc. Through fat and skinny. Through sagging and drooling. You need support to hang in there with this person. But we also need support for these beings who are, as says in the text, alive and flourishing. Shakyamuni Buddha is a transformation body of Buddha who appeared and disappeared. But the true body of Buddha and the bliss body of Buddha are alive and flourishing. Buddhas are alive and flourishing. Great Bodhisattvas are alive and flourishing throughout the universe. And they are doing the same practices, these same three practices.

[54:06]

And when somebody is initiated, they love this person. And they are totally on board to support this person forever to do these practices. That's what Asanga said in the fourth century, and we say that here in this Zen temple. To me, it's just amazing. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm amazed. I'm astounded. I'm very happy. I'm very happy that we are doing this practice And we are doing it to support all those great beings because this makes them happy. They're very happy that we're doing this. And they're very happy to support us. And if we keep doing it, they'll keep supporting us. And because they'll keep supporting us, we'll keep doing this. We're all on the path to realizing that all living beings, not just on this planet, are one family.

[55:09]

And because we do not fully understand this, as we're pushing our wheelchair, as we're pulling our walker, as we're cleaning up our loved one's excrement, as we're suffering. If we don't know this, we will not be joyous with these great opportunities to serve beings. But if we do understand this and we do these practices, we will be happy because we will be doing these practices, which are happiness. Which, as my big friend said, it's hard to be good. But if we train, if we train and we train, we can actually learn to do this. We can be like that. But we do need to train. And if we accept these training methods, we'll get a lot of support.

[56:13]

And from then on, our practice would just grow and flourish. It won't go backwards. It'll go forward. But it's hard. It's a hard practice because we're not going to immediately be able to do these things with no interruption. We're going to slip and slide and fall on our face and forget to be kind. But we have practices to address and remedy our forgetfulness. I'm not going to throw this out in the audience. I'm just going to raise it up here to remember that this pumpkin is in one great family. And I will restrain myself from calling you pumpkin.

[57:05]

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