it seems to me that we live in a world where there is right now a great conflict, a great confrontation is occurring. This confrontation seems to be experienced on an international level. And we live in a We live in, I guess we live on the North American continent, and we live in the middle of a very powerful national state called the United States of America, which is kind of the Rome the Rome of the world now, the most powerful nation. And this nation is standing in confrontation of another nation and actually kind of confronting many nations.

[01:09]

And we sit in the middle of this world. So I begin with the question, how does a disciple of Buddha, how does a person who is committed to the path of enlightenment, how does a bodhisattva who is dedicating her life to practicing perfect wisdom and realizing great compassion. How does such a being conduct herself in the midst of such great confrontation? The question is simply, how does a being whose essence is enlightenment and whose commitment is to enlightenment conduct his life?

[02:41]

One of Buddha's disciples named Subuddhi said to Buddha, How does a bodhisattva and a great being, an enlightening being, stand and go forth in the practice of perfect wisdom? How do you conduct yourself in the practice of perfect wisdom? which is the source of great compassion. And the Buddha said, such a great being should produce a thought, produce a mind, which does not rely on anything. Produce a mind which has no abode

[03:50]

and doesn't rely on colors, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, or any kind of mind objects, any kind of conception or view. This is the way an enlightening being, a great being, stands, sits, and walks the way of perfect wisdom. If the Buddha finds herself in a world of great conflict and great confrontation, the Buddha produces a mind like this, a heart like this. The Buddha produces an unprejudiced mind, an unprejudiced heart. And with this unprejudiced heart,

[04:53]

responds to all the beings that are involved in the conflict. And this response is called great compassion. And this response of great compassion to beings caught in conflict edifies, enlightens and transforms these beings right in the midst of the conflict. Perhaps as a result of this enlightenment, the conflict will come to a peaceful resolution. Perhaps it will not. Eventually, as all beings start to participate in this, the idea is that there will be peaceful resolution.

[05:56]

To give you more feeling for how this mind which has no abode can be realized, this mind, this unprejudiced mind, which doesn't rely on anything, can be actualized, I offer you a kind of vision, a kind of moral imagination of the life of great compassion. And I've been sharing this vision with people for the last few months. And some of you have not heard it, and I'll tell you now. I have in my mind an image of a circle. And one point on the circle is called the Bodhisattva Precepts. the precepts of an enlightening being.

[07:14]

And in our school we speak of the sixteen bodhisattva precepts. That's one point on this circle. Next point in this circle is what I call being upright. And being upright means to have no abode. It means to not grasp things that you're aware of and not reject them. But to be balanced and awake to be attentive but not manipulative to everything that happens.

[08:18]

This being upright is followed on the circle by the vision of how things actually happen, which we call perfect wisdom. It is the understanding of how things actually come to manifest in our life. The next point on the circle is great compassion. Great compassion is born of perfect wisdom. Great compassion is born of the vision of the clear understanding of how things happen. And great compassion expresses itself, shows itself in the world as the sixteen great bodhisattva precepts.

[09:30]

So those are the four points on the circle. Do you remember them? First point is the bodhisattva precepts. Second point is being upright. sometimes called sitting still, alert and awake. Next point on the diagram is understanding reality, understanding how things happen. Next point is great compassion, and then great compassion takes you back to the bodhisattva precepts. Okay? So in this diagram what I call being upright is this mind which has no abode. And the way to enter and realize this mind which has no abode is by receiving the Bodhisattva precepts.

[10:40]

Receiving and practicing them guides us to this unprejudiced heart. the unprejudiced heart then opens our eyes, opens our wisdom eyes, and we see how things happen. Which also means that we see the beauty of the world. And the beauty we see in every created thing is perfect wisdom. The seeing the beauty of every living thing is perfect wisdom. And from the seeing of the beauty of all beings and all things, we are naturally, unlimitedly compassionate. There's a kind of beauty which some people have more of than another.

[11:50]

That's not the kind of beauty I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the beauty of things. I'm talking about the beauty of seeing how things happen. When you see how a person or a plant or an animal is created and you see their beauty, you have wisdom. When you see how things are happening, you are experiencing beauty. Seeing this beauty, you want this thing, this person, this plant, this rock, this mountain, this planet. You want happiness and peace and joy for this being. And you're willing to work for this.

[12:53]

You're willing to devote your life for this beautiful, for this beautiful, for this beauty. Is that picture clear, what I'm saying? Is that picture clear? Now you're ready for some more detail? Okay, do you know what the 16 Bodhisattva precepts are? You don't? Okay, 16 Bodhisattva precepts are, the first three precepts are called taking refuge or returning to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The actual, the returning to your true nature of awakening, reality and the community of practitioners of the way of reality, the way of awakening.

[14:13]

Those are the first three Bodhisattva precepts. that you take refuge and return to that true nature. The next three are to practice right conduct, to practice all that is good, and to work for the benefit of all beings. That's six. Then come ten more. And those ten are practicing not killing, not stealing, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not intoxicating your mind or body, or doing anything to intoxicate others. That's five. Six is Not slandering, not saying anything which will in any way besmirch or reduce the reputation and respect of another person.

[15:35]

Not saying anything about someone that will make people think less of them. Seventh is not praising yourself in such a way that it puts others down. It's okay to say, maybe I'm not such a bad person because I know a person like you. That's not praising yourself at the expense of others. That's praising yourself while simultaneously praising others. Like, maybe I'm not so bad that I got to meet a Buddha. Eighth is not being possessive of anything, even the truth.

[16:40]

Nine is not holding to anger, no inappropriate anger. And ten is to not disparage in any way the Buddha, Dharma or Sangha. So those are the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts. Receiving them and wanting to practice them and realize them and committing to their practice is the way you enter into this unprejudiced heart, this being upright. Once you have received the precepts and then practice being upright, again, to color in this state a little bit.

[18:05]

And as I color it in, I color it in without relying on anything. So I should not rely on anything to tell you what this is like, because this state doesn't rely on anything. It's not a certain way of being, some fixed way of being. It is actually the way of not attaching and not holding to what's happening around you. In order to… and it turns out that this is like a mind, it's an awareness which doesn't hold anything. So there is awareness there. And there is attentiveness and vigilance. You're attentive to everything that happens, you're attentive to. Attentive, attentive, attentive, without manipulation.

[19:10]

Now some people, many people, can be attentive to things if they can also manipulate them. And some people cannot manipulate things if they don't pay attention to them. Like some people's behavior that you're not paying any attention to and you don't see it all, you can be fairly non-manipulative. But that's not being upright. And other people, you can pay close attention to them or things you can pay close attention to, but then when we pay attention, we tend to start, unless we're not relying on what we're seeing and doing, we tend to start trying to make things go a certain way. Being upright is to be devoted to what's happening or to be devoted to something or some being or some person, to be devoted to them.

[20:24]

Knowing that you cannot, you cannot control them. To be devoted to something you cannot control. to be devoted without the intention to control. In other words, to love and give up power. To use love rather than power in relationship to what's happening. You're present and you're expressive. What you're expressing is you're expressing your balance. You're expressing your lack of prejudice. You're strongly standing and expressing that. You are expressive.

[21:29]

You're not just non-manipulative. You're expressive of non-manipulation. You show the unprejudiced heart. You stand up and show it to the world. to everything you meet. You say, here is my attempt at meeting you without prejudice. And I'm giving you my full attention. You are strong in this way. And you are vulnerable. You are asserting yourself. This is my life. This is me. This is me trying to be here with you and not control you. This is me loving you.

[22:31]

This is my love for you right now. 100% I love you. 100% I'm devoted to you. or at least that's my intention. And part of my intention is to tell you the truth when I don't fulfill my intention. And so let me say right now that actually I'm only 80% devoted to you right now. But telling you the truth is 100% again. And in that state, of balance, in that state of full self-expression, full assertion of yourself, at the same time that you recognize the other, you're asserting yourself and you're vulnerable to the other.

[23:32]

In that state, you can say to someone you're vulnerable to, you can say, You can say, I hate that. I want you to stop that. And in that no, which is 100% at the moment what you have to say, this is not a prejudice no, this is just your no. You're also not prejudiced against saying it. And it also includes, yes, I see beauty in you. And I say to this beautiful, I say to the beauty I see, I say no. But I don't say no to manipulate you. I say no as an expression of my lack of prejudice.

[24:40]

The no is not a prejudice. It's just no. And I'm saying it. One time I was at the airport, some airport, probably an airport in Japan or... Because I remember there's a lot of Japanese people around. and I saw one Japanese mother, I think she was Japanese, and she was taking care of her son. And the boy, the little boy could walk. Not very well, but he could walk, and he could walk pretty fast, but he was unstable and could almost always falling over. And there's lots of sharp objects in the airport, sharp points on edges of chairs and tables, escalators, you know, those cars that drive up and down the road, suitcase edges and things like that.

[25:57]

She was with him, and he just ran all over the airport. And she was with him, right behind him, wherever he went. She didn't have him on one of those little chains. She didn't have him in harness. On the other hand, he could have been in harness. Even having your child in harness, you can still use the harness without trying to control them. But, you know, she didn't have a harness. And she followed him wherever he went. She was completely attentive and not trying to control his course. Sometimes he knew she was there, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he looked over his shoulder to check. Yep. Sometimes just charging off. But she was always there, always attentive, and no time to control. Always ready to help, but not trying to get him to offer her certain opportunities to help rather than others.

[27:03]

Now, if his body was falling forward and his head was heading for some sharp object, then she probably would say, no. In other words, she probably would do her thing of trying to get between him and that sharp object. But even there, I propose that you can do that without the impulse to control. but that you're actually just expressing yourself. And in fact, sometimes when you express yourself or sometimes when you slip into trying to control or to control the baby's body so it doesn't get hurt, sometimes they still get hurt. But if you try to express yourself and you're not trying to manipulate, the baby may not get hurt.

[28:23]

But also, even if the baby does get hurt, even though the baby gets hurt, the baby is loved in its injury. On the other hand, if the baby is prevented from injury, by someone who's acting out of control. Although they seem to be prevented from injury, they actually are hurt by someone who switches from love to control. As far as I know, there's no statistics out on whether when you try to protect beings with a controlling attitude or with a loving attitude, which one actually prevents them from physical damage more. I don't really know. I don't. I think, probably, that the way of expressing yourself

[29:31]

from this position of seeing beauty will actually protect them better. In the practical sense, I think it probably will. But I'm not sure. But I think so. The reason why I think so is because when you're trying to take care of something which you see the beauty of the thing, when you're in touch with the beauty of the thing, you're in touch with the reality of the thing. And when you're in touch with reality, it's not so tiring to protect. It's more enjoyable. And you have reality working with you in the process of trying to protect them. When you're trying to control things, you blind yourself to reality. And even though you're trying to protect or care for a being, you can't see how very well because you don't see what's happening.

[30:34]

Your eyes are shut to the totality of the situation, which tires you, enervates you, discourages you a little bit or a lot. But even if it's a little bit, if you do it over and over, you gradually get burned out Whereas if you're in touch with the beauty of how something happens and you go to protect and care for the thing and attend to the thing from that vision, you're most able, most helped in your helping. Your body and mind understand the situation and you go with the situation to do what is most helpful. But even if that weren't so, The most important thing is that you show beings what love is, rather than you protect their body from dents, which are going to happen anyway.

[31:37]

Everybody gets dented in this life, big time. We're all going to get dented out of this body entirely pretty soon. The question is, before that happens, are we going to express love and receive love? Are we going to realize wisdom and compassion and receive wisdom and compassion? So what I'm suggesting again is that these precepts guide us into this unprejudiced position, this position of strength and vulnerability to everything we meet. From that position, our eyes open, we see beauty, we see how things are created, and in that vision, we respond appropriately. It's not for me to say how well other people are doing that,

[32:45]

unless they beg me. Mainly I'm checking myself. So now, you know, well, maybe I'll start with a small-scale example first. Not small-scale, but closer to home example. Like most of us have parents or children or spouses. All of us have had parents, I suppose. Or at least we have, if we don't have spouses, parents or children that are living, maybe we have someone that's really important to us. In our relationship with these beings, the time may come in our loving relationship with beings, the time may come when we say, no, I do not agree.

[34:00]

I do not support this behavior. This can happen in a loving relationship that you find yourself saying, no. You find yourself saying, I want you to stop this. Or, I want you to do this behavior on Mars. So I told the story, and I won't go into details here, but a couple of years ago, I told my own daughter, I want you to move out in one week. if you don't get a job." I looked my beautiful daughter in the face and said this. And I didn't flinch and look away.

[35:02]

And I wasn't angry. I was just telling her, I want you to move out in one week if you don't get a job. And another friend of mine recently told her son, I want you to move out. you're not behaving properly. And another friend of mine says, every time my daughter comes to my house, basically what I want to say is, please leave. But I told myself and I told these two mothers, I think it's okay to say to your daughter, I want you to leave. To say to your son, I want you to leave. But to say it so, if that's how you feel, to say it so purely, to assert yourself so fully that you feel totally vulnerable to them at the same time. To say, and hopefully to say to someone who is the most, who shows you beauty more than anyone, to say, please move out, please leave, I don't want you here.

[36:23]

That sometimes comes. Sometimes comes between spouses too. You say no. But can you say that, not as a technique to get them out of the house, Not as a technique to get them to change their behavior. Not as a technique to get them to get a job. But not as a technique at all, but simply as what your heart coughs up through your mouth. What an unprejudiced heart has to say. Namely, I want this. I don't like that. That's it. There's no objective in that. when it's full self-expression. There's no objective. You're attentive, you're strong, you're vulnerable. You're listening to her, you're listening to him, you're recognizing them fully, and you're expressing yourself fully too.

[37:30]

You're giving them honestly what you are, and that's it. You don't give them what you are in order to get something from them. You don't give them what you are in order to cause an effect. You give them what you are because that's all you ever can give. And you know that, and you give it. And when you give it, you realize how vulnerable you are because your gift now is you. And they can dislike you for what you gave. They can hate you for what you gave. They can hate you for what you asked. They can hate you for how you feel. And the person who hates you is this beautiful being in your life. And this is the price of love. And this is being upright and letting expression come up from that uprightness. And let the uprightness make space for the fullness of it.

[38:38]

And when it's full, it is satisfactory. It is satisfying. It has no objective other than being what it is. You have no objective other than being what you are. Your expression has no objective other than being itself. This is what you give. A complete gift. And that's it. In the next moment, there you are again being strong and receptive and something will come back. Hopefully you can do it again in the next moment. But even if you slip and can't stay with that kind of presence, at least you did it once. Like they say, it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all. But what I understand that right now to mean it's better to love and then lose your love. In other words, not lose the object of your love, but lose your ability to love. To have the courage to love, to have the courage to be honestly who you are, that's love.

[39:42]

And to be able to do that once is better to do it once, even though the next moment you can't, than to have never done it at all. I think so. Your life was not in vain if you have one moment like that in your life. one moment. You have given something of wisdom and compassion and enlightenment in that one moment. And when you're that way and you give that way, and you give again that way, and give again that way, and settle into this kind of presence, this upright being, your eyes start opening even more to the beauty, even more to the reality of how things are happening. And your expression gets better and better, and in other words, more and more accurately in attune with what's happening, because you start to see through this

[40:48]

balanced, upright being, and through watching how the actions which come from that are responded to, you start to see how things are made, how things appear and disappear. You start to enter into the reality of how things actually happen and become more and more intimate with it, steeped in it, steeped in it and expressing it through you back and forth until your wisdom is perfect, complete. And then great compassion comes from you. And you teach beings not killing, not stealing, not lying. You say the truth. You say your truth. Not the truth. You say your truth. Without any agenda other than telling the truth, you show beings what it means, what the precept of not lying means. I say, if you say a truth, but you say that truth to get something, that's not the, you didn't tell the truth.

[42:00]

If you say the truth in order to get something, then you should say, I'm saying the truth, but the reason I'm saying the truth is to get something. Then you said the truth. But if you tell people what you're trying to get, you won't get it. So then you realize you wouldn't do it that way because you wouldn't get anything once you tell them. And so on. All the precepts will be expressed and shown by your behavior. And then those precepts will again take you back to this unprejudiced heart and round and round you go. Producing this thought, this mind which has no abode, practicing perfect wisdom, expressing great compassion, practicing the precepts, round and round like that. So now we have this big thing, right? big government, big government leaders confronting other big government leaders and saying, no.

[43:06]

But not just no, they're also saying, no, and if you don't do what I say, then this. Now, is it possible, and it may be possible to say, no, and if you don't, and if you can, no, don't do that, and if you keep doing that, I will do this. Is that possible to say without being manipulative? Yes, it is, I say. But, of course, it's also possible to do it as manipulative. But it is possible just to say, no, don't do that, and if you do, I will do that. x but not to do it in order to get them to do what you want but just telling them where you're at it's just information don't do that if you do i'll do this that's just who i am but i'm not telling you that to get you to be different you know like i could say to you

[44:16]

Well, you know, don't spit on me, because if you do, I'll wince. I always wince when people spit on me. But I don't necessarily tell you that to, you know, to get you to not spit. I just want to tell you beforehand how I am. It's possible to set rules to work with. It's perfectly all right. And you can set them lovingly without the slightest sense of trying to control people. Like you can say, this is what I want to do with you. If you want to do this, I want to do this. If you don't do it this way, I'm out of here. But I don't do that necessarily to get you to do it the way I said I will do it.

[45:23]

So when I got married, my wife said, for one rule, no hitting, which means me not hitting her. That was a rule. If you hit me, I'm out of here. I'm gone. I'm gone. And I think she said around that time or later, I'll still love you, I just won't be near you. And you can say that same thing to, you know, your children. You can say, no hitting, don't hit mommy. If you hit mommy, mommy will leave town. And you might wait until your children were like 160 pounds or something before you said that, but... Because when they're little, it seems like, oh, it's okay if they hit you. They don't know any better. But at some point you might say, stop hitting mommy. But of course you can do that in order to manipulate them into doing what you want.

[46:35]

But you can also say it just simply as information. I could say to you, okay, do you want to practice Zen with me? Then? you have to tell me the truth. I say, if you want to practice that with me, oh, good. Well, I got a rule. Rule is, you have to tell me the truth. You have to tell me the truth. You have to tell me what's going on with you. You have to show yourself to me. That's a rule. If you don't show yourself to me, bye-bye, I'm out of here. I won't play with Zen with you anymore if you don't show me who you are. If you don't express yourself honestly, I won't play Zen with you anymore. I will not support you into thinking that you're practicing Zen and you can get by with lying to me. Lying to me means not showing me what's happening. I won't put up with that. I tell you that. That's the rule. But I don't do that to you to get you to start telling me the truth.

[47:39]

If you don't want to tell me the truth, it's okay. I love you anyway. But I'm not going to sit and listen to it for very long. I don't want you to think you can get by with that. With me. In the sense of having me sit there and continue to listen to it. You can get by with it with me, but then the way you get by with it is you don't see me anymore. You can see me. You can see my back. I'm running away. You know, running away. Looking for somebody who will tell me the truth. Somebody who wants to play having unprejudiced heart. But I really can say that to somebody. It is possible for me to say that to somebody without trying to get them to be different. To really appreciate, hey, this person is really beautiful. Such a beautiful person. He's gorgeous. I mean, I'm totally awestruck by him, and he's not yet ready to tell me the truth, and I'm not going to sit here and let him do that.

[48:44]

I mean, he can do it, but then I'm gone, or the door shuts. It's not manipulative. It's attentive, and it's loving. It can be. And I'm perfectly happy to wait one minute, two minutes, ten minutes, fifty years, many lifetimes, until so-and-so wants to tell me the truth. But I'm going to keep saying to so-and-so, that's the rule, that's what I want. So you can stand there and say over and again, this is what I want, this is what I want, this is what I want, I want this, I want this, I want this, if that's what you have to say. This is what I want, this is what I want. And you even say, this is getting boring, isn't it? I'm not very creative in some ways. There's not much variety here. Every time I see you, all I can think of is this is what I want. Somehow, that's the kind of relationship we have. I want you to tell me the truth, or I want you to stop doing that thing which hurts you, or I want you to stop doing that thing which hurts me, or I want you to stop doing that thing which hurts them.

[49:53]

That's what I want. You can say it over and over and over just because that's what you have to say. without trying to manipulate or control them. And if they see that love, over and over and over and over, eventually they'll be converted. Not necessarily to do what you want, but to love. That's the way of the bodhisattva. That's not the way of the power person. So now, Is our government talking to other governments that way? And are we talking to our government that way? Are we trying to control our government? Each of us has to think, are we standing up and talking to our government and talking to our fellow citizens and saying, I don't like this. or I don't like that. Each of us has our own opinion, our own view. Are we expressing it attentively and non-manipulatively?

[50:56]

Are we showing our fellow citizens and our government who we are? Are we showing them, the government people, the government leaders, the way that they should talk to the other government people? To say, this is how I feel, this is what we need, And we love you. Do we love Saddam Hussein? Bodhisattvas love all beings, all beings. Without exception, they love them. But again, love can take the form of no. When I see you, I say no. But I don't do that to manipulate you because I see beauty when I see you. And I want to care for you too. But the way I care for you is to say big no. And I'm devoted to you and I'll keep saying no to you until I stop saying no.

[52:01]

And I don't know when I'll stop saying no. I'm a puppet of reality. And you can say, I'll stop saying no when you do this. It's okay. You can say that without manipulation. And you can say it without manipulation when you see the beauty of a being because you can see how this being gets to be that way and how they can't be any other way. But also how you can't be any other way than to say no. It's not power. It's the way things are. and you're attentive to that on some level you are grateful for what's happening and you see beauty and that mind which is grateful for what's happening and sees beauty can say no in this

[53:19]

in this way, in this compassionate way. What time do you have? I do too. So I will continue to paint this picture of moral imagination for a while, and I invite you to jump into it, to receive the Bodhisattva precepts, to practice being upright, to see the way things happen, to realize great compassion, and to teach the Bodhisattva precepts. This is how you can realize perfect wisdom and great compassion, if you want to.

[54:28]

This is open to all beings. I'm convinced. Are you? Thank you for coming here through the wind and the rain. May our intention

[54:54]

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