I'm looking at them and they're looking at me. Some of them. And they're smiling now, some of them. Yeah, most of them are smiling. Well, great. I'm smiling too. Have you heard what this room is called? Do you know what this room is called, children? No? Does anybody know? What? This place is called Green Dragon Temple. Right. And this room, do you know what this room is called? We sometimes call it Zendo, a Zendo, which sometimes we translate into English as Meditation Hall. So for some reason or other, you children and adults are in what is called a meditation hall.

[01:11]

Do you know what meditation is? Well, one of the meanings of meditation is something that you think about. A meditation is a topic for thought, a topic to look at and think about. For example, being a good parent could be a meditation topic. Parents could meditate, could think about the issue, the job. They could meditate on the job, being a good parent, That could be a meditation. Children also could meditate on being good sons and good daughters and good brothers and good sisters.

[02:12]

That could be a meditation. Does that make sense? No? Maybe later. So in this hall, this hall is offered as a place for people to come and think about certain topics. And in particular, we think about the topic of living to help all other living beings. We meditate on that here. We sit here We stand here, we walk here, and while we're in this room we meditate on how can we benefit all living beings. Because as you may know, living beings often have a hard time.

[03:19]

Especially around, for example, bedtime. Or bath time. or work time, or eating time, or going to the toilet time, or brushing teeth time. These are times when living beings have a hard time, often. They have pain. Or when they're playing with each other sometimes, they have pain. They get angry, they get confused, they get frightened. This is normal, and we try to meditate on how can we help living beings who are having a hard time being alive. Being alive can be very hard, very difficult, very frightening. We're meditating on how can we help living beings with this life situation. And to make a long story short, we call the meditation in this room, we call it zazen.

[04:37]

So this is a zendo for practicing zazen, which literally means sitting meditation. So we sit and we meditate. What do we meditate on? We meditate on the way of helping beings, the way of making beings free of fear, the way of making beings at peace and happy. We meditate on that. We call it Zazen. We also call the way of helping beings, we also call it enlightenment. So we're also meditating on enlightenment in this room. We sit and we meditate on enlightenment, on understanding reality so that we can live in a beneficial and liberating ways for all beings.

[05:43]

For example, if you want to help your brother or sister, if they have some problem, If you understand how to help them and you want to help them, then you might be able to. But if you want to help them and you don't understand how, then it's really hard to help them. If you become enlightened, you understand how to help them. So we wish to become enlightened so we would understand how to benefit living creatures, humans and animals and plants and everything. And the way of contemplating our life so that we can learn how to help and be enlightened, the way of contemplating how our life is enlightenment and how enlightenment is our life, that contemplation we call zazen, we call sitting meditation.

[06:49]

So how is enlightenment our life and how is our life enlightenment? How is sitting meditation enlightenment and how is enlightenment sitting meditation? Well, when our life is characterized by certain practices, it is enlightenment. And when our life is enlightenment, it is characterized by certain practices. What are these practices? Well, we call them giving, generosity. Do you know the word giving? Do you know the word generosity? Not yet? It means, well, I'll come back. I'll just tell you the whole list. Giving. Being careful of all our actions, which is also called ethics. Patience. What's the word?

[07:58]

Really wanting to do something. Really, really wishing to do something, having energy to do something, which we also call enthusiasm or vigorous effort. That's the fourth one. The next one is concentration. Concentration. that we actually try to develop a calm mind. And the sixth one is wisdom. So when our life is, when our life, when our actions, when the way we're living is generosity, And being careful of what we think and say and do with our body posture, ethics, and when we're patient and when we're full of energy to do good things and when we're calm and flexible and when we're wise, when we live that way, that's the way of enlightenment. And when we're enlightened, that's the way we live. So, for example, giving, the first practice of enlightenment, the first thing we contemplate, giving means that you give gifts to beings.

[09:15]

You give gifts to your friends, you give gifts to your family, and also giving means you receive gifts from your friends and your family. And these gifts can be material gifts. Like you can receive milk from your mother. And you can give your mother milk too. You could bring your mother a glass of milk. That would be giving. You could give gifts to your brothers and sisters. You can give them toys. You can give them food. You can give them kindness. Another kind of gift is you give... So, for example, parents try to give the children teachings. They try to teach their children how to live. And giving their teachings, and also you could teach your little brothers and sisters. You could teach them.

[10:20]

That could be a gift. And the other gift is the giving of fearlessness. Fearlessness. You could teach your brothers and sisters, and maybe even adults, you could teach them how to face fear, how to be present with fear. You could give that gift to them if you learned how. But another kind of aspect of giving is giving toward yourself. So at the beginning I said to you, welcome, welcome, welcome. I did that as part of the practice of giving. I want to welcome all of you. And also with myself. Sometimes the way I am, I say welcome to myself. Or myself, I mean, I say welcome to the way I'm feeling. So, for example, if I'm feeling... Depressed.

[11:22]

Do you know what depressed means? Sad. If I'm feeling sad, I try to practice giving. I try to practice generosity towards me feeling sad. I don't tell myself not to be sad. I say, welcome sadness. When I feel sadness, I practice saying, welcome sadness. If I'm afraid, I practice welcome fear. If I feel happy, I say welcome happiness. If I'm confused, I say welcome confusion. If I have pain in my body, I practice saying welcome pain in my body. If I feel other people are being unkind to me, I say welcome. I say welcome to them. I don't like pain. And maybe I don't dislike pain. I don't like pleasure.

[12:24]

I don't dislike pleasure. I say welcome to it when I'm practicing giving. I don't like it if my brother or sister takes something from me before I have a chance to give it to them. But if I think they do, then I say welcome and I quickly give it to them. So, I say we practice that way, and actually, perhaps I shouldn't say we. Maybe other people don't practice that way in this room. But what I'm giving, I'm giving you a gift now. The gift I'm giving you is the gift of a teaching. And the teaching is how to help people. And it has six aspects. Giving, ethics, patience, energetic work, working wholeheartedly, concentration, being calm and relaxed, and wisdom.

[13:29]

Those six. The first one is giving. I give you the gift of teaching you what giving is. This is my understanding of it. I apply it to everything I'm feeling and thinking, which means I apply it to everybody I meet, because everybody I meet is who I think I'm meeting. I try to welcome everything that anybody is and I try to welcome and encourage them also to welcome themselves. This is the beginning of enlightenment is to let yourself be the way you are in a warm and welcoming way. It's learning to say no matter what's happening thank you very much including after you say thank you very much, you can say, but I don't want that. Thank you very much, but I don't want that.

[14:33]

Thank you very much, now please stop that. And you can say please stop that as a gift. I want you to know I want you to stop that. I want you to know I want you to do this. I'm telling you I want you to eat dinner now. So the parents can say to the children, I want you to sit down and eat as a gift to the children, as an act of enlightenment. And the children can tell the parents how they feel as a gift after they welcome what the parents gave them. Thank you, mommy, for telling me you want me to eat dinner, and now I'd like to tell you how I feel. But as a gift, mommy, I know, Mommy, you're not trying to control me. You're just giving me the gift of telling me what you want. I know you want the best for me, and you think it's best for me to sit down and eat my food that you've made for me now.

[15:42]

And I say, thank you very much, Mommy. And now I'd like to give you a gift, Mommy. Do you wish to receive it? And maybe Mommy says, oh, yes, please, tell me. And you give your mommy the gift. And then you go on giving gifts. And go on giving gifts. And meditating on gift giving. And then you also practice the other aspects of enlightenment. Careful of how you talk to your mom. Careful of how you talk to your dad. Careful of how you talk to your brothers and sisters. You speak carefully. You speak in a kind and gentle way. You speak like you're talking to a little baby. You speak in a way that they'll find pleasing. Even if you say, no, I don't agree with you, or please stop that. You say it in a kind way. You speak carefully. You speak, try to tell the truth.

[16:45]

Try to speak in a way that is true. The way you use your hands, you are careful how you use your hands. You're careful how you Eat your food. You're careful of how you touch little babies. You're careful of how you touch little animals. You're careful and gentle. You're careful with how you act. That's called ethics. And so on. So this is what we're doing in this Green Dragon Temple. We're meditating on enlightenment in this way. And this morning, when you were listening to me, You were meditating. You were paying attention to this teaching. And listening to this teaching and thinking about this teaching is meditation. And I thank you for your patience in listening to this talk. Pray, what does that mean?

[17:48]

Anybody, any of the kids want to say what I might mean that? Yes? Yes. What? Louder. Meditating. Yeah, right. Meditating is prayer. When we meditate here, we're praying. We're wishing that all beings will be happy. We're wishing that all beings will become enlightened. We're wishing to make Buddhas, enlightened beings. That's what we're wishing for. And I wish you, each of you, I wish you young people I wish you will become Buddhas. And I'm not in a hurry. I just wish it. So I thank you for coming and listening to me tell you that I wish you to become Buddhas. Thank you for coming. The children, it is my wish that they will become adults. And I want you to know I also wish that all of you will become Buddha.

[18:52]

And if you do, I will join you I wish to join you. So again, by the way, I did not know that it was a children's talk today. This was, you saw how I, I found out when I saw the children coming in. So I thought, well, I'll give them the adult talk. And they have these little minds which actually will remember this talk forever, probably. So they got this actually basic teaching of what the practice here at Zen Center is, the practice we call Zazen, And Zazen, sitting meditation, that practice which we do here is the practice of enlightenment.

[19:55]

It's the practice of Buddhas. And it has these six aspects. However, I just want to say right now that what people often think of as the meditation practice in this room, they often think of it as the fifth practice. of the six. Do you remember what the fifth was? Concentration, right. Just like a child, she remembered. People often think that the meditation practice that we perform in this room is concentration. And they're right, it is. We are practicing concentration in this room. But I'm saying that to practice in accord with the tradition is to practice complete enlightenment in this room which includes concentration but also starts with generosity and followed by ethical

[20:59]

discipline and patience and enthusiasm and then concentration and then wisdom. So we practice wisdom in this room. We practice giving in this room. We practice generosity when we sit, when we walk, when we stand. That's our practice. And again, I say ours. I don't mean to impose that on you. I'm speaking for what I see as the tradition, the tradition of making Buddhas. So our sitting meditation has these six aspects and they're done sequentially. All six aspects include the other five. Wisdom is based on and includes the first five. Wisdom is the basis of the other five and includes the other five. However, giving... Did I say giving or wisdom? Giving... supports the other five, but it precedes the other fives too in practice.

[22:05]

We start with giving. We can't be wise unless we're generous to our own experience, which means our experience of our own body and mind and our experience of other body and mind. We have to be generous towards what appears to us as all living beings, including what appears to us as our own psychophysical experience. We must start there. When that practice becomes complete, wisdom is there. Wisdom is always there, but we have to start with giving to realize that wisdom's already here. So in the practice of becoming a Buddha, there are infinite practices, but the summary of them is these six practices. Giving, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom. That's an analysis. That's a summary of the process of becoming a Buddha.

[23:08]

And it's also, I would say, it's a summary of being a Buddha. And also, it is an articulation of what we call in this temple, zazen. Once again, many people who come to sit here, they immediately start trying to practice concentration, which is allowed. I know I would not try to stop somebody from just coming into the room and immediately trying to practice concentration. It is an aspect of what we are practicing here. Concentration. A very important aspect. I could never say enough in praise of it. And when they come and try to practice concentration, sometimes they feel...

[24:11]

that they are not succeeding in practicing concentration. They feel unconcentrated, distracted, agitated, etc. Perhaps that makes sense to some of you. And when I hear this, when people are talking to me about this, I often check to see if they practiced the previous four practices. And I find out that they don't. Sometimes. Or I find out that they practice some of them, but not all of them. Or I find out that they practice all of them, but not very thoroughly. In order to really be calm and focused and relaxed and open to our life, In order to really be that way, as fully as we can, we need to practice these first four practices.

[25:14]

You can't be calm with what's happening to you if you don't welcome it. You can't be calm with what's happening to you. For example, some great pain, you can't be calm with it if you're not patient with it. You can't be calm with it if you're not careful with it. You can't. You can try, and I say many people come to Zen and try to practice concentration, which is the fifth of the practices that are included in Zen, and they don't succeed because they don't do the first four. And if they do the first four, they do succeed at concentration. And when they do the first five, including concentration, then they're ready for wisdom. We can't be wise without concentration, giving, and so on.

[26:16]

That's a proposal to you. That's a gift I offer to you. Unfortunately, it is already, according to this watch, getting close to 11 o'clock. I say unfortunately because many is not. But I feel in some sense sorry that I don't have more time to talk to you. But I think some of you want to leave here today. It's a nice day. You'd probably like to do something else and sit here and hear these teachings for the rest of the afternoon. But I've just scratched the surface. I'm sorry. I will continue though to scratch the surface and maybe get below it someday. I'm just telling you, I'm surprised that it's almost 11 o'clock. And I'm patient with this situation.

[27:21]

And I welcome it. I do. I welcome that I have almost no more time to talk to you. And I welcome those of you who seem to enjoy that. And I welcome any of you who don't enjoy it. And I don't in any way undervalue your not enjoying what I'm doing, but I still welcome you, those of you who don't enjoy what I'm doing. In relationship to the practice of making Buddhas, which we call for short, what? What? Somebody say it. One person say it really loud. Yeah. Making Buddhas is enlightenment. What else do we call it? Zazen. In relationship to Zazen, in relationship to enlightenment, which are these six practices, again, these six practices are the way of living, which is enlightenment,

[28:30]

And this is the way enlightenment lives, these six practices. Okay? The one I really wanted to emphasize today was the fourth. Enthusiasm, zeal, heroic energetic effort. Words that I didn't have time to find another way to talk about that the children would understand. Enthusiasm means I'm literally full of the divine, full of God. At the center of these six practices, number four, is what fuels all the others. In a way, it should be first, but it can't be first because before you practice generosity, ethical conscientiousness, and patience, before you do those practices, you're not ready to really generate spiritual energy for enlightenment.

[29:43]

I was struck, towards the beginning of May I was traveling and I went to my hometown and I was doing a retreat and quite a few people came to talk to me and they said things to me like this, I'm not practicing Zazen anymore. They came to a retreat to practice Zazen, so during the retreat they were practicing. What they meant was, in my daily life, I'm not practicing meditation. I'm not meditating on enlightenment. I'm not making a place in my life to sit and think about what enlightened life is. I'm not doing that. The person made the effort to come to the retreat for five days, and came in and told me that they aren't doing the practice, which they want to do, but they're not doing it. Somebody else came and said, I'm still sitting.

[30:59]

I'm still practicing meditation, but I don't have much energy for it. I don't have much enthusiasm. Somebody else came and said, I'm still practicing somewhat, but it's kind of pro forma. I'm just going through the motions. So I travel around and I go to meditation retreats and people come to the meditation retreats and tell me that they don't have much energy for meditation. And they tell me that because they're not comfortable with that. And so I ask them, well, do you practice enthusiasm? And they say, what's that? Many meditators do not understand, they don't even seem to have heard of this fourth aspect, the fourth aspect of becoming a Buddha.

[32:04]

The fourth aspect is enthusiasm. They don't understand that that is a necessary part of being enlightened. That is a necessary part of actually meditating on helping beings. So that's what I want to emphasize today. And I still have a little time. It's 11 o'clock. All that happened since it was almost 11 o'clock. Sometimes we feel full of joy at the prospect of meditating, at the prospect of thinking about being generous, being ethically disciplined, being patient, being enthusiastic, being concentrated and being wise.

[33:33]

Sometimes we feel that way. Sometimes we have enthusiasm. which is wonderful. Then perhaps if we have enough, we actually do the practices. But that energy is an impermanent thing until we're completely a Buddha. And then it's just like, it's natural. But until that time, we actually have to practice enthusiasm. One might say, how often? Well, I would say often enough so that you're enthusiastic all the time. But I say all the time, but there's also kind of a rhythm to it. In other words, sometimes you feel enthusiastic and sometimes you're doing the practice which generates enthusiasm. And once again, I find that many Zen students, it's news to them that they have to, that it's part of their responsibility to generate spiritual zeal.

[34:49]

And spiritual zeal, again, is the fuel of all practices of virtue. This is the place I usually sit during meditation. I sit there and I practice generating enthusiasm for sitting there. And I sit other places too. around the world. And I sit at those places and I generate or I give myself, I donate myself to the work of meditating, to the work of making Buddhas.

[35:54]

But I also give myself to the work of generating energy to do the work. we often start sitting here and other places like we start sitting here at 5 in the morning quite frequently which means we get up before 5 in the morning quite frequently which means sometimes we're tired if we went to bed at 11 o'clock So we come here and we're kind of tired. We don't necessarily go to bed at 11 and wake up at 4 and go, I get to practice meditation. Well, let's go. Come on. I'm going to walk down there step by step and I'm going to sit there and I'm going to really like make Buddhas. We don't necessarily get up like that. You might wake up like, where am I? Where is it? Is this Spain?

[36:55]

Is this Green Dragon's antenna? Where am I? Oh yeah! This is the bed I went to sleep in last night and this is the bed out of which I shall rise and go to practice enlightenment. Oh yeah, right! Now I'm starting to generate energy by remembering that. the root of enthusiasm which is necessary to make Buddhas, the root of enthusiasm which is necessary to make the realization of enlightenment, the root of it is aspiration. And the root of aspiration is reflecting on the practice. Again, sometimes you're enthusiastic. Great. But most of the time you actually have to work at it. You have to work at generating the fuel, the spiritual fuel.

[38:03]

We also need physical fuel. We need to eat rice and so on and vegetables. We need that too. But even though we have a good diet, we still have to do a spiritual exercise to generate Not just a little, but a lot of energy because this practice of enlightenment is very demanding. You have to have a lot of energy to say thank you when somebody slaps you in the face. When strong pain comes, to welcome it with compassion and wisdom, it takes a lot of energy. And if you got it, it uses it up and then you have to go generate it again. It's necessary to repeatedly refresh, renew, recreate spiritual energy. It's part of the practice.

[39:06]

And sometimes people don't do it and then they don't have it and then they They quit. They don't quit eating usually. They don't quit other things usually. They keep sleeping and eating. And here at Green Gulch, they keep sleeping and eating and working. People work really hard here. Farming, gardening, maintaining the plant, cooking, administrating. People work really hard here. So they get tired here. they get weary. So when you get weary, in order to keep practicing making Buddhas when you're weary, you need to be kind to the weariness. Otherwise you're going to be weary kind of like period.

[40:09]

But you can be weary and also Be kind to the weariness and spiritual energy can come up in the weariness. Actually, tremendous spiritual energy can come up in weariness if you practice enthusiasm with weariness. Enthusiasm arises out of weariness. We do get weary. And when we're weary, we try a little tenderness. We don't just practice weariness, we bring compassion to the weariness. And bringing compassion to the weariness, there is life. There's spiritual life. There's a story which we often repeat, which is the story of a of a person who aspired, who meditated on enlightenment.

[41:19]

And his name was Zuigan. Zuigan. And he woke up in the morning. Maybe he, like me, maybe he said, where am I? Because one might wonder where one was if one didn't know. Because every morning when we wake up, we do make up and we sort of make up a story. But for a while there, we're not sure. And then after finding out that you're here in a world, then he said to himself, he called to himself, Master. And he answered, yes. And he said, are you awake? And he said, yes. And he said, all day long, don't forget. And he said, I won't. Now you might think, or I might think, I don't know if I should call myself master right away in the morning.

[42:29]

Maybe that's arrogant. But I would say to you, you know, you don't have to take that too seriously, that master part. You could also say, Hey, student. Or hey, disciple of Buddha. But maybe keep it short. Hey, disciple. Hey, yogi. Hey, master. Yes. Are you awake? Yes. All day long. Don't get distracted. I won't. From what? From enlightenment. Which is what? Zazen. Which is what? generosity, and so on, up to patience, up to wisdom. I won't forget that all day long. Now, that doesn't mean I really won't. It means that's just what I aspire to. I aspire to remember welcoming everything and everybody.

[43:31]

When I came down here just now, I was walking down the path intending to give a talk, something like what I gave here. And I saw the children here. I aspire, I think I would really, I aspire to be enthusiastic about practicing generosity towards the appearance of these children who I wasn't expecting to come here this morning. But I didn't want to, like, say, no thanks, children. I don't want to, I don't aspire when children show up to say, no thanks, I'm not planning on you being here now. I was intending to give a talk to adults where I tried to practice giving when I saw the children. I tried to be careful of what I thought and said. I did say to my attendant something like, did I say something like, oh, it's a children's lecture? I said that to him.

[44:35]

Oh, it's a children's lecture. And what did you say? He said yes. And then I was careful of what I said from then on. I didn't tell the children, I wasn't expecting you. I didn't tell their parents, I wasn't expecting them. Now some of the parents know, but I wasn't. I tried to be careful of what I said in response to this surprise. When surprises come, if you meet them with these practices of enlightenment, when the practices come and you meet them with giving and so on up to wisdom, then those moments of surprise heal the world. Those are very auspicious moments if you meet them well.

[45:44]

Like, I was expecting to be healthy today, but sickness has come. I'm surprised. And I meet it with, thank you very much. Enlightenment grows right there. With patience, with a pain, unexpected pain, that you're surprised by. In that surprise, thank you very much. And be careful how you say thank you. Say it in a kind way, not sarcastic, not ridiculing, not like, thank you very, like they say, thank you very much. There's a way of saying that that they say in England quite a bit. But it doesn't really mean thank you very much. It's more related to whatever. So I have not complained about this unexpected event and my aspiration is to have a compassionate response to the surprise

[46:57]

and to be patient with any discomfort of the adjustment to the surprise and to be calm and focused and not get distracted by the surprise from the welfare of all beings. We keep getting spun around by surprises. We need to train to not get distracted from making Buddha. And if we forget then we practice generosity towards our forgetfulness and then at that moment we remember and we're patient with our forgetfulness and again we're careful with our forgetfulness and what we say about it and other people's also so if you're sitting with other people and they they look like they're um they look like they think they're in the wrong place they look like they're asleep that they're not enthusiastic You may need a lot of enthusiasm for practicing generosity to actually say, welcome.

[48:11]

Welcome people who don't seem to be enthusiastic. Welcome. You are welcome. I want to welcome you. And I want to be careful of you and patient with your lack of enthusiasm. Not, you know, I'd like to go to some other meditation hall where the people are enthusiastic about meditation. No. I'm in this one. This is the one where I want to be enthusiastic about practicing with these people. And if I myself am sleepy and I myself don't have much energy, then it looks like this is a job for enthusiasm. Which means I have to go back and consider my aspirations So one of the repeated themes of this talk is I don't have much time.

[49:30]

And I say that again because in the teachings for how to generate enthusiasm there's quite a bit of material. So the basic one I've already told you that Enthusiasm is developed by considering your aspiration. And you consider your aspiration until you start to think that what you aspire to is really quite good. And you consider it more until you start to think, well actually it's very good. And you consider it more until you think, Not only is it very good, but I wish to practice it. And not only do I, and you consider it some more, and not only do I wish to practice it, I wish to practice it with my whole heart, with my whole body and mind.

[50:36]

That would really be great. I really feel good about this. And I really feel good about not only that somebody would do this, but I feel good about me giving myself to it. This reviewing of the aspiration until you feel full of spiritual energy, whatever your condition is. And then you're ready to do these practices. And another part of this practice is called, another part of generating enthusiasm is called, this is a tough one, rest. Rest is part of generating enthusiasm. Another way that that practice is talked about sometimes is rejection. Like we sometimes say, give it a rest.

[51:38]

Another way to put it is reject it. So what do you reject? You reject some things you're doing which you've been doing too long. Even good things, if you do them too long, it's not actually appropriate. You've done them long enough. It's time to stop and rest and recoup your energy. Because you're still doing it, but you lost your enthusiasm. You're still doing it, but you've lost... Your energy is not there anymore. It's more like inertia. You're still doing the good, but it's by inertia rather than by generation from enthusiasm. At that point, we often... in some sense, start making mistakes. Because we're still doing it, but without the sufficient energy, we make mistakes. We're not able to be attentive. You know, I don't know, what just popped in my mind is truck drivers. You know, they drive too long. They lose their enthusiasm for driving skillfully.

[52:45]

Does that make sense? Non-truck driver is the same situation. They're driving, but they're losing their enthusiasm for driving carefully. In order to... And so the next thing I think about is then what they sometimes do is they take drugs to stay awake. Does that make sense? Sometimes mild drugs like caffeine, but sometimes more heavier drugs so that they can stay awake and get their truck to their destination on time. This is an example of you want enthusiasm to do something skillfully, but the enthusiasm that really makes Buddhas is based on the first three practices. Generosity towards your sleepiness, welcoming it, being careful of it,

[53:48]

Don't intoxicate it. Don't slander it. But in this case, I'm thinking, don't intoxicate the weariness with intoxicants and be patient with it. And this might lead you then to take a rest. And then you say, but I don't want to take a rest because then I'll be late and I'll get fired. So then they keep driving because they don't want to get fired and we have an accident because they didn't rest. They were not driving on enthusiasm, they were driving on confusion. They lost the spiritual energy. Because I think they often do actually want to drive in a safe and skillful way. They want to be good drivers. They want to drive in such a way that it benefits other people. Or anyway, some people who want to make Buddhas would drive that way.

[54:53]

Many of you drive. You don't necessarily drive trucks, but you drive and you want... I shouldn't say you do. You might want your practice while you're driving to be the practice of enlightenment. You would like to drive perhaps in a way that you feel enthusiastic, really enthusiastic about driving really well. That you see how good that would be. And that from there you could drive in a really concentrated way, focused and relaxed and joyful. at performing the duty, the job of driving. And then all other activities the same. How can you do them in a way that makes enlightenment? We have this practice of generating joyful

[55:56]

zeal at doing our job our actions in a generous ethical patient concentrated and wise way and part of that is to stop doing some things like driving when you've driven enough you've driven skillfully enough it's time to pull over and park and rest until you feel Yeah, now I feel like I have the energy and enthusiasm to drive skillfully again. The other thing to reject is reject practices that are too advanced. Which in this case is, you know, it could be applied there too. It's too advanced for you to continue to drive when you're this tired. That's too advanced. I cannot stay awake. I need more energy and I don't have it. This job is too big for me. Postponing or rejecting practices that are too advanced is also part of enthusiasm.

[57:05]

It's getting kind of late, so I'm just going to summarize by saying if possible before, but also during meditation, when you're meditating, please understand that it is traditional. The Buddhas, if you wish to practice enlightenment, the enlightened beings have taught us that part of that practice of enlightenment, part of meditating on waking up in such a way as to help these part of the practice is to husband is to mother and father and care for your spiritual energy care for it which also includes generating it's your job to generate spiritual energy. And if you have any, and I will continue to talk about this, if you have any questions you can talk to me about it, a question and answer or other times.

[58:17]

Please understand that this is part of your responsibility if you wish to help the world in the best way is that you are responsible for generating your enthusiasm for the practice. Again, as I said, many people come into this hall and they feel some enthusiasm for practicing concentration, which is great, and then they practice concentration. But they don't realize, some many people, that they have to do something to take care of that enthusiasm, which it goes away. And when it goes away, they're kind of caught flat-footed because they don't say, oh, yeah, right, it's time to move over and work on enthusiasm. It's part of the practice. Concentration needs it. So if you come in and you practice concentration, really you should practice enthusiasm in order to practice concentration and in order to practice wisdom.

[59:19]

And again, in order to practice enthusiasm, you need to practice giving and ethical discipline and patience. And the root of the enthusiasm is the aspiration. And aspiration has six aspects. But as I say, there's no time today. During question and answer, I'll tell you the six aspects. And then maybe the next talk I give here on the 22nd, I'll go into the six aspects of generating the aspiration which makes this energy. But I felt like it was too much to get into those today. Although I do have all this stuff available. which the ancestors had transmitted about how to generate the aspiration which makes this enthusiasm. So you, as much as you know now, is that you look into your heart and see do you aspire to benefit beings, all beings, in the greatest way of enlightenment.

[60:22]

If you do, then that's your aspiration. That's the root of your energy. That's the root of your spiritual food. Keep going back to that aspiration every day, many times a day if possible. Go back to that aspiration and work that aspiration until you feel full of joyful energy to practice enlightenment. And understand that you're not the only one that has to do this. All the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have to do this too, and they told us about it. And all of them are forgotten, just like we do. And they've told us about it. And when we forget, then that's ethics. We notice, oh, I forgot. Okay, now let's go back to work. What work? Check out my aspiration. It's not what he tells me. It's what I aspire to. It's what you aspire to. Look in there to the heart of aspiration and hang out there until you feel it coming alive, alive, alive. Please.

[61:23]

Thank you very much.

[61:25]

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