Fish are jumping and the cotton is hot. Your daddy's rich and your mama's good. So rest, little baby, even while you cry. With all these wires on, I had images of what is sometimes called an ICU. And I thought, intensive care unit. Actually, that's sort of what I'm going to be talking about today, is intensive care units, sometimes called bodhisattvas.

[01:01]

beings who are intensively caring for all living beings. Could you move up that way a little bit, please? A little bit more? Move your whole cushion, maybe? Thank you. Just a moment ago I said something like, perhaps we could turn the lights off and meditate. And perhaps what we meditated on was silence and stillness. But another meaning of meditate is to meditate on a meditation. The English word meditation, looking it up in the dictionary, the first meaning of meditation is a text, a teaching that's offered for contemplation.

[02:23]

And meditation is also the practice of the contemplation of a meditation text. So I will be offering you meditation texts all day long, things for you to meditate on, things for you to contemplate. Sometimes you can contemplate them right while I'm talking to you. You're hearing me offer you these meditations and as you hear them you can contemplate them, you can meditate on them. Other times we'll be sitting quietly or walking quietly. And during those times, too, you can contemplate the teachings which you've heard, meditate on them. The title or the topic I offered for this day was, Ethical Training for the Welfare of the World.

[03:35]

that itself is a meditation. We'll be contemplating ethical training for the welfare of the world, which could also be broken up into, what is the welfare of the world? And do you want to live for the welfare of the world? And the other part is, what kind of training will help living for the welfare of the world? So I introduced a term which may be very familiar to you or not. It's a term, a Sanskrit term, I guess, bodhisattva, which can be translated as enlightening being or hero of enlightenment or heroine of enlightenment.

[04:41]

It refers to somebody who wishes to live for the welfare of the world, who wishes to live for the welfare of all living beings, and also wishes to realize the highest state of wisdom in order to skillfully live for the welfare of all living beings in the world, or in a world. Someone asked me just a few days ago something like, if you want to be a bodhisattva, does that mean that you are a bodhisattva? If you want to be someone who lives for the welfare of all beings, then are you a person who lives for the welfare of all beings?

[05:43]

And I said, usually we don't use the term that way. So in other words, another way to say it is, you become a bodhisattva. You become a person who's living for the welfare of all beings by taking care of the wish to live for the welfare of all beings. By developing that wish, you become that kind of person. when you first think, or when I first think, I would like to live my life for the welfare of all beings, that thought is the seed for becoming a bodhisattva. And bodhisattvas, the word bodhisattva is also used for a person who is on the path to Buddhahood. So the Buddha, the historical Buddha, before becoming the Buddha, referred to himself as the bodhisattva. So those who are on this

[06:46]

evolutionary path to becoming fully enlightened, fully compassionate for the welfare of all. Those are bodhisattvas. And if we care for this wish to live for the welfare of all beings, we become a bodhisattva. So this wish, this aspiration to be helpful to all beings and even set all beings free from suffering, that wish is the seed that makes a Buddha. But this wish needs to be trained in order to be realized. The being who has this wish within them, or this wish itself in a being, if it's trained, the wish is realized. And so I would call the training of this aspiration to benefit the world the training, an ethical training.

[07:57]

And I propose a narrow meaning of ethics or ethical training would be concerned, the concern or being concerned and studying what is conducive to enlightenment, what is conducive to Buddhahood, and what is not conducive to enlightenment. Sometimes that's called wholesome and unwholesome. Wholesome is what's conducive to wisdom and compassion. Unwholesome is what is not conducive. So that's a limited meaning of of ethics is to study what's wholesome and unwholesome. A wider meaning of ethical includes the former meaning, but also includes enlightenment itself.

[09:03]

So the one who wishes to realize enlightenment for the welfare of the world needs to pay attention to what's conducive to that enlightenment and what's not, but also they need to pay attention to the enlightenment. So ethics can also include not only concern for wholesome and unwholesome, but concern for concentration and wisdom in all the practices which make the best possible understanding of life and the greatest possible skill in helping others. So I'll be using ethical in this broader sense which includes the narrower sense. Again, going back to the welfare of the world,

[10:09]

Some people come to Zen practice places, where I have practiced. They come to meditate. And when they hear the teachings about a life devoted to the welfare of all living beings, some of them have come and told me, I want to know if it's okay if I practice here at this Zen Center, because I'm actually not really interested in helping all living beings. I just want to help myself. I don't really want to be a bodhisattva. and devote my life to the welfare of everybody. I don't. And being a Buddha is just too much for me to even think about. So is it okay for me to be at Zen Center? And so far I've always said yes.

[11:17]

It's fine. However, if you stay here, you may keep hearing about these bodhisattvas, which may be rather irritating. So, you're welcome to stay even if you don't want to live a life for the welfare of all living beings. And that includes you're welcome to stay in this retreat here today even if you do not yet feel that you really would like to live for the welfare of all beings. And someone else said to me, well, how about if I want to learn to want to live for the welfare of all beings? I said, that's good too. So please take a moment and look to see if you actually would like to devote your life to the welfare of all living beings.

[12:21]

While you're contemplating such a thing, you can sometimes drink tea. One can contemplate this question all day long. Do I want to live for the welfare of all beings while I'm driving my car? Maybe the answer comes, I don't know. Maybe the answer comes, yes, I would. So I'm saying, okay, if you wish to, then we have a way to train that will protect this wish and let it grow. Another thing I would point out again and again is that when this wonderful wish arises in a, for example, in a human, it's like a

[13:37]

It's like a candle flame. It can easily be blown out by a light breeze. But if you take care of this flame, it can grow. It will grow. If you take care of it with certain training methods, it will grow and grow and grow. And then it will become more like a forest fire. And then when wind blows on it, it just gets stronger. If you have this wish and it gets blown out, you can find it again by looking inward. Where did that wish go? What was that wish again? Again, a lot of times people go to a teacher and they talk to the teacher and they remember in the conversation with the teacher, oh yeah, right, that's what I want to do with my life. Why do I forget it?

[14:41]

Well, we forget it because the wind blows hard sometimes. Like sometimes we think, I want to live for the welfare of all beings, and somebody comes up and insults us. And we forget to say thank you very much. We forget to say, how can I help this person who is insulting me? We forget. But then we can remember again. By again saying, what was the point of my life again? I knew it a couple weeks ago. What was it? I can't remember. Maybe I should go talk to my teacher. Oh, I remember now what it is. Great. And you start over. So in the broad meaning of ethical training, I would include then all the practices that are conducive to enlightenment.

[15:55]

infinite practices, infinite ways of practicing, infinite ways of living, all of which are conducive to supreme perfect understanding and complete unhindered compassion and skill. All those practices are the way to take care of this aspiration to bring benefit to the world. And there is two simple kind of like summaries of the infinite practices, of the infinite ethical practices. One summary is called the Three Pure Bodhisattva Precepts. Number one, which actually I put in the middle in a way, because number one is the basis of the next two.

[17:01]

Number one is the practice, you could say the practice of presence. Another way to say it is the practice of restraining being distracted. And in this first ethical training, what we're trying to be mindful of is not trying to get anything out of life.

[18:02]

Another way to characterize this first training method is to be aware, to be mindful that Buddhahood or the Buddha way, the way of the Buddhas, is not and cannot be separate from our daily life right now. Can you see how the practice of the precept of presence goes with the teaching that the Buddha way cannot be separate from our present situation? Does that make sense? So we restrain going someplace else from here to find the Buddha way.

[19:25]

We restrain ourselves from thinking, I wish I had a different state of mind so I could practice the Buddha way. We think that. We have that impulse to think we need a better state than this one to practice with. The first precept is, don't go someplace else to find the path of living for the welfare of beings. Give up going someplace else to practice. If the Buddha way were other than our daily life, we would never be able to practice the Buddha way, because all we've got is our daily life. Also, if the Buddha way was other than our daily life, then the Buddha way would be defiled by being dualistic, by being something other than something else. But the Buddha way is not dualistic. It is not defiled.

[20:28]

And because it's not defiled, it can be with us no matter what we're doing. And if our daily life, if we think our daily life is something other than the Buddha way, then our daily life is defiled by thinking it's separate from the Buddha way. So the practice of presence there is to be present with our daily life. Even be present with the thought that the Buddha way is something other than this, which it's not. And if you're present with the thought that it is separate, then you're present with the non-separation. So, the context of all the practices, all the ethical practices, in some sense the context of it, is that wisdom is not separate from delusion.

[21:42]

That's the context for our training of our thoughts, to training of our aspiration, to realize our aspiration. Wisdom understands that wisdom is not separate from delusion. Delusion thinks that wisdom is separate from delusion. But that does not mean that delusion is wisdom. It's just that delusion, which is not wisdom, is not separate from wisdom. Wisdom is understanding that delusion is delusion. And it's also understanding that delusion is not separate from the understanding that is delusion. That's the context for our practices. Our practices, when we first started them, are somewhat diluted.

[22:47]

For example, when we first start... even when we first start thinking of living for the welfare of other beings, we really want to, maybe, and we really want to take care of that wish. When we first think of it, we think, well, those beings which I want to benefit, they're separate from me. I really want to help them, but... Honestly speaking, I think they're separate. Even my family, who I totally devoted to, and I'm happy that I am, I do kind of think they're separate. And I've heard that that's a delusion. So I guess I'm deluded. However, I've heard the delusion is not separate from enlightenment. So it doesn't mean I'm enlightened. It just means that enlightenment is not someplace other than me being deluded. So I probably should be here, because enlightenment's here, and I'm deluded. And I want to bring welfare to this delusion, and I want to bring welfare to all delusion.

[23:56]

But the context of bringing welfare to delusion is not that I'm going to go someplace else from my delusion to get wisdom. It's that by bringing certain practices to delusion, I realize how deluded it is, which is wisdom. The understanding that we're not separate is wisdom. Buddhas teach that Buddhas understand that Buddhas are not separate from living beings, and living beings are not separate from each other or Buddhas. The understanding that there's no separation is not separate from believing that there is separation. So all of us who believe or who see that we're separate and fall for it, none of us are separate from the understanding that that's an illusion, that wisdom is pervading us all the time.

[25:00]

And if we care for this aspiration, we will enter that wisdom. If we're kind and practice concentration and wisdom with the appearance of separation, we'll realize that there isn't any. So this is the first pure precept. The first training method is to develop the ability to remember, to be mindful, that although we're not completely enlightened right now, complete enlightenment is not the slightest bit separate from us. Complete enlightenment is the complete understanding of the way we are right now and now. That's the first training method. And when you move on to the other training methods, that one doesn't go away.

[26:10]

That continues to be the context of the whole practice. Again, can you see how the practice of presence and the practice of non-separation are the practice of the precept which says there isn't any separation between enlightenment and delusion? Can you see how that's the practice of presence and how that's the practice of restraining the thought that we should work with something other than what's being given to us right now? Does that make sense? That's the first training method, the first pure precept. And if we practice that precept, you remember that precept, that purifies all the other practices we do. All the other virtues we try to develop in order to benefit beings are purified by this context because we want to do these other good practices, but we're not doing them to get something.

[27:15]

Okay, so what are the other two of the three pure bodhisattva precepts? The second one is called practicing all that is wholesome, all that is conducive to enlightenment. And that also is infinite. As I said before, all those practices conducive to enlightenment and conducive to realizing the bodhisattva aspiration, they're infinite, but they're summarized by six practices. And those six are giving, ethics, And you could take it as ethics in the narrow sense of focusing on what is conducive to awakening and paying attention and being careful of what isn't conducive to awakening.

[28:39]

And three is the practice of patience. And four is the practice of heroic enthusiasm. And five is the practice of concentration. And six is the practice of wisdom. So those are the six practices which constitute or summarize the second pure precept. The sixth category of all those practices called wisdom is resonating with the first pure precept. The first pure precept is the context for practicing these next six And the sixth of that next group is understanding that the context is true. So at first you are mindful of the teaching that what's happening right now cannot be separate from Buddhahood without saying that it is Buddhahood.

[29:42]

So we don't say this is Buddhahood, we just say it's not separate. And Buddhahood understands that that's true. We also don't say, we don't even have to say that it isn't Buddhahood. Just, it's not separate. So that attitude sets the stage for actually the wisdom which understands this and realizes it. The third pure precept, first is presence, first is the context of the whole practice, which purifies these six practices, which summarize infinite practices. The third pure precept is maturing all living beings. The point of this whole process is to benefit all living beings, but the third category of practice is that you apply the first two practices

[30:45]

to the third practice, which is maturing beings. So all the beings you meet, including yourself, you practice generosity, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom with all of them. So those are the three ethical training methods which summarize infinite varieties of practices. I'm thinking that now it might be good for us to stand up and go outside and do walking meditation, or stay inside and do walking meditation, whichever you like, for about ten minutes.

[32:06]

And while you're walking, I I request, I encourage you to contemplate what you've heard, and then if you can remember any of it, when you come back, we can have some questions. And if you don't remember, I'll just say it over. So is walking meditation now?

[32:31]

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