Is the part that's half full completely full all the way to half? The thought crossed my mind, you know, I can't fill your heart with compassion.

[01:02]

That thought crossed my mind. But then I thought, hey, I want to attach to that. Why not? Why not? So anybody that doesn't have a heart full of compassion, please come up here and I'll fill it with compassion. Anybody needs a fill-up? It won't last. Pardon? It won't last. Did you say it won't last? Right, I know it won't last. Okay, here we go. Here we go. It's not working. It's not working.

[02:04]

Okay. I give up. Somebody said it wouldn't last anyway. What does it look like? What does it look like? it's very similar to, I mean, it's indistinguishable from letting go of all your preconceptions, which we need to do in order to understand the teachings of the Buddha. We need to forget all about our preconceived ideas.

[03:08]

Now, the big one is we need to forget about our, what do you call it, our pie, our preconception of inherent existence. That's the main one. Yes? She said, it seems fast to jump to ultimate reality on the second day of Sashin. Well, you're not ready to let go of the idea of the second day of Sashin? Couldn't this be like the first day? Or maybe the 19th day?

[04:10]

This is the 19th day of satsang and I've been preparing you for 19 days. For 18 days I've been preparing you for ultimate reality. But you could just say, I don't feel ready. 19 days isn't enough. Well, forget about 19 days. Anyway, I appreciate your feedback. So you said there's some, what do you call it, you said there's some fear someplace, did you say? Oh, fear of... It might be sadness? Okay. Well, so how do we work with ultimate reality and sadness I told you, how do we work with sadness? How do we work with sadness?

[05:12]

Huh? What? Be sad? You said be with, I would say, you know, take out the with. Be sad. Huh? You are? Well, that's good. No, you say it's okay, and I say it's okay that you say it's okay. But I'd say it's good to be sad when you're sad. If Buddha were sad, how do you think she would be? Pardon? She'd be compassionate with herself about being sad. I think so. And to be with sadness, you know, take out the with, to be sad means you give up all your ideas about sad and just be sad with no leverage on being sad. Now, if you're also afraid about being sad, then I say, tell me about what you're afraid about being sad.

[06:21]

I think sad is, I would distinguish sad from being depressed. Sad, I think, is like medicine. It's like a salve that your mind secretes to help you let go of things that are gone. Like your whole life up to this time, it's shot. You lost it. But we have some, there might be a little bit of attachment to some of it. Okay? That attachment to things that are gone is dragging us down. And our mind and our heart don't want to be dragged down, so they secrete this sadness, which helps us relax into now.

[07:24]

Helps us let go of what we don't even know we're holding on to. If you feel the sadness, that feeling refers, you know, refers to the part that's holding. If you're open to the sadness, the part that's holding opens too. So you don't know where the part's holding, but when the... when the grip on the sadness is opened, when you're not resisting the sadness and you're open to the sadness, something down deeper opens too and lets go. And then your life that you've lost is just lost. It's not lost and attached to. So then you're fresh. So Sashin offers a time for the mind to say to you, Feel this. Feel the sadness.

[08:26]

Open to this sadness. And opening to the sadness, opening to the sadness is compassion. Opening to the sadness is patience. Okay? And if you can open to the sadness so much so that it's just sadness, this is real, just right. Sometimes we're running around and we're carrying a lot of stuff, we're being burdened, we're being dragged down by the things we're attached to, but we don't notice it so much. And sometimes when we sit still, for a while, we start to notice what we're holding, and then the sadness arises to let us drop it.

[09:32]

So again, the taking care of sadness You're also opening to taking care of sadness, opening to the sadness. You're also open to Buddha's compassion, to big, big, big compassion. Not just compassion for this one experience, but a compassion for everything. being willing to feel what you feel, you also begin to be willing to feel supported in a way that you dare not hope for. And the way you're supported, as someone said, will not last.

[10:55]

But that's okay because you're only supported for this moment. You're not supported for what's not happening. And when things change, you're not supported for what's gone now. You're supported for the next moment. So it's fine that our support is only momentary. Our life is only momentarily supported, moment by moment. So I want to be careful not to rush you into... I don't want to rush you out of your suffering, you know, rush you away from your suffering to look at what will free you from your suffering.

[12:19]

that would be the wrong way to approach the truth which would set you free, which will set you free. Because whatever suffering, whatever experience you have, it's not like we should rush ahead from that to some better experience. But whatever experience you have of suffering, is completely inseparable from the Ultimate Truth. Being ready for what's happening is being ready for forgetting the preconception of inherent existence. being patient and being ready for this moment-by-moment appearances, this moment-by-moment fragile other-dependent conceptual

[14:06]

body and mind, is to be ready for forgetting all about it. So perhaps we have this idea of things substantially existing, and we hold to that idea.

[15:31]

And we have that idea even before, sort of like, we have that idea almost like before things happen. So kind of like, we're kind of like What do you call it? We're like really prejudiced. We've got a tendency to be prejudiced so that everything that comes, we're ready to project some substantial quality to it so we can grab it. Maybe we're like that. And this is painful to us. So as a subtle shift of perspective, it's so subtle it's not really even a shift.

[16:42]

So it's more like not trying to shift away from this, but admitting it. Just admit that we're up to this, if we are. Try to notice what you're already up to. So feeling sadness is not what I'm talking about. It's actually that we don't just feel sadness, we think it's real. We don't just feel pain, we think it's real. We don't just feel joy, we think it's real.

[17:48]

Would you like that window open? I think it's too noisy for people if you open it. You're hot. Are you hot? You trying to get some air? Oh, you're trying to save a bumblebee. Trying to release it? Why don't you go get a cup and a piece of paper, put the cup over it, and then slip the paper under the cup. You know what I mean? I do. I'm sort of thinking something that shepherds the window. I would shepherd it. Just put it in a cup and then take the cup to the window or to the door or to the garden and then remove the piece of paper from the bottom of the cup. You understand what I mean? I do.

[18:49]

Even a raft instead of the sizes. Because of the size, you want to change the program? OK, there it goes. Bye bye. Strictly speaking, it's not an interruption. I think it's very important to give up all ideas of what a Dharma Talk should be. It's also good to give up ideas about what a bad Dharma Talk would be or a good Dharma Talk would be. We have ideas, that's okay. We have ideas, we have feelings, we have emotions, we have intentions, we have motivations. You name it, we've got it, right? Okay?

[20:02]

The thing is to forget about it all. Let go of it. Don't attach to it. Whatever comes in your mind, don't attach to it. Don't attach to anything in your mind. But that doesn't mean you push it away. So if sadness arises, you don't attach to it. But that doesn't mean you move slightly to the side or move closer or farther. Now, if you were leaning away, it might be okay to move closer to the extent that you'd sit up straight with it. If you were leaning into it, it might make sense to move away in the sense that you'd sit up straight with it. But the point is not to get away from it or towards it. The point is to assume the balanced, ready, open, loving posture with regard to what seems to be appearing.

[21:15]

Buddhism doesn't say nothing appears. It just says that whatever appears, appears in dependence on other things, And therefore, it has no inherent nature. It's just an appearance. All you've got is an appearance. So let's, you know, anybody who has any kinds of appearances and wants to talk about how to lovingly attend to them, If you feel like you need to work on that more before we supposedly talk about something else called ultimate reality, then you can bring that up. Do you have something, Brett? Yeah. In other words, it seems clear when the loving attending is attending to something that's different from loving attending.

[22:26]

But it gets much more confusing when it seems like I'm trying to apply loving attention to the opposite. In other words, I would take this angry, hateful, resisting, rejecting. In other words, am I attending to it? Am I trying to be real? Yeah. Well, I think what we need to do is we need to learn to be able to distinguish between, well, like again, sitting in the meditation hall, maybe being somewhat uncomfortable, some kind of pain, mentally or physically, having some kind of pain or discomfort. Is it possible to look at that And lovingly means just say, there's a pain.

[23:29]

And to notice if there's any impulse to try to get rid of that pain. And if there is an impulse to get rid of that pain, then to lovingly attend to the impulse to get rid of the pain. And if there's actually the impulse to get rid of the pain and then maybe even some, I don't know, some anger associated with the feeling of getting rid of it, not just a mild, I'd like to get rid of the pain, but kind of an angry, I'd like to get rid of the pain, then again, lovingly attend to that anger. So this seems to be something that's brought up again and again. How can you be loving towards the manifestation of anger towards discomfort?

[24:31]

How can you be loving towards it? So like, you know, We have some examples right here of two people sitting right near each other who are bringing up anger. And so can I be loving towards them? And my feeling is, well, yeah. Is it a slippery slope? Yeah. Is it easy to sort of get frustrated by them tenaciously holding to anger? Easy to feel frustrated by that. But can I feel love towards the frustration at them getting off their anger thing? Can I? Well, yes. Can I lose it and get impatient with them? Well, sure I could. It wouldn't be hard. But can I not? Yes. You know, I have some motivation, some things I have in mind to do with my life.

[25:52]

I do. But when my life appears, it doesn't go that way. And so if I want to talk about something and somebody tells me that they would like me to slow down and not, you know, go forward on that for a while until we clear up some other matters, I feel like, thank you. Thank you. If we can all work with this together, and nobody's in a rush to get ahead of where we are, we can understand the Ultimate Truth. So right now somebody has their...the space between their eyebrows is kind of crinkled, like he's trying to understand what I'm saying.

[26:59]

Well, that's okay. But you've got to let go of that. You've got to let go of that space between your eyebrows. That's not going to grasp the ultimate truth. But letting go of that or whatever else you're trying to understand anything. I'm recommending that. Letting go of whatever is going on in your mind. And we can gradually work up to the big grip, the big preconception. If one seeks a life of misery, one is going to be successful, probably.

[28:50]

There's some kind of coherence there in seeking misery and getting what you're seeking. So seeking is very useful if you want to be miserable. Also seeking happiness will also give you misery, but it's antithetical to your seeking. Seeking ultimate truth, seeking the liberation which ultimate truth is, is antithetical to realizing ultimate truth. So I'm fairly convinced that giving up attachment to whatever's going on and giving up seeking for anything is the way to realize Buddha.

[30:05]

And I'm also suggesting that when you experience something in yourself or when you experience another being, another human being, a bumblebee, a flower, a leaf, your lunch, whatever, that to meet things without attaching or seeking is love. And it's also the mode of realizing what the ultimate way the thing is. which also entails that meeting things in this way, we let go of the preconceptions which we hold, which block us from seeing the way things are. And we need to practice in this way, what do you call it, in real time,

[31:29]

in real life situations, in real life situations, there's currently some pain or pleasure going on. Sometimes not, sometimes we can't tell which it is. But when we're in pain, it's hard for us to dare to let go. In a firm pleasure, it's often hard for us to dare to let go. But lovingly attending to our pain and pleasure is the way to let go. And again, what I mean by love is non-attachment and non-seeking. rooted in compassion.

[32:36]

We're rooted in compassion. Compassion is the root and we're rooted in compassion. And there's no seeking in that compassion. Being rooted in compassion is not to be rooted in the world. Being rooted in the world makes our compassion, you know, well, what? Being rooted in the world is the thing we feel compassionate about. It's not, it's a different kind of rootedness. It's holding to appearances. It's holding to making things substantial. It's holding to thinking things are ultimately real that aren't.

[33:42]

Feeling compassion for yourself when you're like that and for others like that is to not attach or seek anything other than that. You're feeling strangled, did you say?

[36:30]

You're feeling strangled by yourself, maybe? That's a possibility? Okay. Okay. You know that the root of the word anxiety is to be strangled? So feeling strangled is the way that we feel all the time, actually, on a subtle level at least. Whenever we grasp what's happening as substantially real, as soon as we grasp, we feel strangled to some extent. So if you can start there and you say, okay, I feel strangled, I feel strangled, and I don't feel like there's no room for compassion in the strangledness, right?

[37:48]

Is that what you're saying? But you feel strangled though, right? You can barely tell me that you feel strangled, right? Right? So is compassion something different from the way you are? Huh? You don't know. Do I know? Do I have confidence in compassion? So, do I think compassion is touching you right now? Do I? I do, you're right. Do I think compassion is letting you be the way you are right now?

[38:53]

You're right. Do I think compassion is letting you think that you can't even see any room for compassion? Hmm? Couldn't follow that? Too many words? Sorry. There was an impulse for me to tell you, you know, just to sort of like... I was going to tell you to do something with your arms and legs. And if you did them, you'd probably lose that feeling of feeling strangled. But I didn't. That's not compassion. Compassion is I let you be the way you are. You may not feel like you can let yourself be that way, but you are letting yourself be that way. That strangled feeling is a precious piece of information.

[39:56]

It's exactly what you have to bring forward and study. It is yourself. Like you said, probably doing it to yourself. It's not so much you're doing that to yourself, that is yourself. Your self is exactly the strangled thing. Not just a self, but a self that we think is real. That's exactly the same as feeling strangled. There isn't like a self that thinks it's real and then somewhere in the neighborhood a feeling of strangled. It's the same thing. So the fact that you're feeling that and can identify that means that compassion is working in your life. to let you feel that. You feel enough compassion coming in your life that you dare to face this. Kind of funny, huh? That compassion helps you face, helps you feel that you're being strangled. If without feeling compassion we don't dare face this painful situation of having this substantially existing separate self,

[41:17]

So the very fact that you feel this is Buddha's compassion working in your life. And I'm not trying to make you different from the way you are. I'm not trying to make you more the way you are. I'm trying to give you confidence and compassion to show you that it's there right now by the fact that you're willing to feel the way you do and feel it enough to tell us And then you help us too. You help us understand compassion. And the more you can not seek anything other than this strangled feeling,

[42:21]

the more you'll feel the compassion working, the more you'll realize compassion. Because Buddha's compassion does not seek Thank you for your expression. Did you express yourself fully? Yeah, that's great. Yes? You mentioned about not seeking, but it seems that we're all seeking happiness. It's kind of a human condition, and it seems that it was Buddha was seeking happiness.

[43:24]

happiness or the truth. Yes. And so then he said, okay, you know, life is suffering. Here's the way out of it. So it's hard not to, when you're suffering, say, well, look at that. The Buddhist said that there's a way out of this. And if I practice, you know, right view or, you know, the Eightfold Path, then there's freedom from suffering. So it's hard not to then, when you're in suffering, want to get out of it and would have been told that there's a way out to seek that way. Uh-huh. Did you say when you're suffering, it's hard not to seek a way out of it? And then if you hear somebody saying that there is a way, it's hard not to seek that way? It's hard not to seek that way which will get you out of it? Did you say? Okay, so you know the way that's going to get you out of it? Right, so you can seek that way, but obviously if you're going to seek that way, what you're going to do is give up seeking.

[44:28]

So if you really think that's true, what you just said, then you will now start working at not seeking, right? You didn't hear the Buddha say that? Oh, well. And if you don't grasp any extremes... you can't seek. That's one of the lectures which I'm willing to not give if you don't want me to, about the Buddha, about the middle way. But I have it right here. It says, see, it says middle way. Over here it says, you know, not seeking these kinds of extremes, not seeking those kinds. But I'm not attached to giving this talk. So, I do hear the Buddha saying, don't seek anything other than what's going on.

[45:35]

I do hear the Buddha saying, work with this, the thing that's happening. Don't seek something other than this. Seeking something other than this implies eternalism. holding on to what's happening implies annihilationism. The two extremes which the Buddha warned us against grasping, the two extremes which he says if you don't grasp those, those are the middle way, those two extremes are implied by seeking and attachment. Giving up seeking and attachment is a yogic instruction to refrain from attaching to those extremes. So the question is, do you really have a doubt about the instruction, don't seek?

[46:49]

And if you do, keep bringing it up until you're convinced that not seeking is the way and that seeking is antithetical to happiness. If you really think seeking makes you happy, keep making the case for it. If you doubt the teaching that not seeking is the way, keep discussing it. Because this person has been convinced by the instruction, do not seek anything, do not attach to anything. I'm not saying I never slip. I'm just saying I'm convinced. If you're not, bring me a scripture where it really, you know, when the Buddha says, seek something, okay, whenever the Buddha says, seek something, if the Buddha does, this is always in the realm of what's called interpretable teaching. You know?

[47:52]

In the ultimate teaching, the Buddha is not saying there's anything to seek. In the ultimate teaching is selflessness. no self. There's not something to seek. There isn't anything to seek. But most of the Buddha's teachings are in the realm of self. You do this, I do that. So all those teachings where he's talking in terms of the things which he basically refuted in his teaching of no self, all those things can be interpreted. The Buddha may tell somebody, you know, take a walk, go over there. That's conventional teaching. So you can interpret it. The Buddha said, and another expression of the middle way is, to say that things exist, that's one extreme.

[49:04]

To say that they don't is another extreme. Okay, those are another version of the extremes. The Buddha said that, apparently. That kind of teaching is not, that's not so interpretable. That's the middle way. That's emptiness. So we don't grasp that things, things exist means they really exist, means they always exist. Things don't exist means they really don't. Once they arise, they're really annihilated. But sometimes the Buddha talks as though, you know, there's something over there. So he says, you know, go get that thing. Go to town. Get some food. Buddha talked like that. as though he was saying things exist, because he had to talk to people in terms of their understanding at that time.

[50:21]

So it isn't that he didn't say that, but just that you can interpret it. But the teachings on emptiness, the teachings on the Middle Way, are sometimes definitive. You don't have to interpret them. He really did mean what he said at that time. But most of what he said was interpretable. He was talking in terms of things that he refuted, that he studied and forgot about. What causes us to remember that we're seeking? What causes us to remember that we're seeking? It's pretty hard to understand emptiness, to understand ultimate truth.

[51:32]

But understanding how cause and effect works is considerably more difficult. So, after you understand ultimate truth, we'll deal with that question, okay? Those kinds of things are more difficult to explain what causes us to be the way we are. It doesn't mean we shouldn't ask the question. It just means We have to understand phenomena as they're coming to be and realize what they really are before we can answer the question of how everything works. Yes? When you talk about seeking, are you referring to the second noble truth about thirst and desire and craving as a cause of suffering? Is that synonymous with seeking and desire? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Seeking is pretty hard to separate from craving, from wanting something other than this, or wanting, or being afraid we're going to lose this and then attaching.

[52:40]

So thirst can be, when it's towards seeking, it has to do with the fact that we think things can last. When it has to do with attachment, it's because we think things can be destroyed, annihilated. But that isn't the way it is that things are annihilated or last. But our minds can easily think in those terms, and they can think of sixty-two varieties of working with those two. The Buddha didn't find any way to work with those two extremes that made sense to him. So that's why he said, you know, you have to find a way to stop thirsting seeking something else or attaching. I have a question. When you say there's no substantial existence, is this the same as saying everything is changing, or is it different? It's different.

[53:41]

Everything that's changing is impermanence, the impermanence of things. But the insubstantiality of things is the fact that everything depends on other things for its appearance, and also in particular depends on conceptualization. that everything's just this kind of like constructed appearance. When you see how it comes to be, you don't find any substantiality there. And if you can attend to things lovingly, if you can attend to things in this non-grasping, non-seeking way, you have a chance to see how they really are. But again, I think a better way to say it is you have a chance to see

[54:46]

their causal nature, or you have a chance to see their interdependence, or you have a chance to see how they dependently co-arise. You have a chance to see on what they depend for their arising. And then you cannot grasp them anymore. So you train yourself at not attaching and not seeking. And that opens your eyes to the way things are. And then you can't attach or seek. because of the way you see. Now, because of the way we see, we feel like we can attach and we can seek. We can imagine seeking. We can feel like we're seeking. We attach to a pain, we seek it to end. We attach to a pleasure, we seek it to stay, or another one like it. That's the way we see things. It's natural for us to seek and attach. if we can give up the seeking and attaching, we can see the way things are is that we can't.

[55:54]

We're cured of disease of ignorance in that case. In the meantime, we train ourselves at the way we would be if we did understand. But we also have to train ourselves at admitting the way we are. We have to admit that we are attaching and we are seeking. And we have to admit that we do think that there is something substantial there. We do think these things are real. We have to admit that. And we have to feel what it's like to have that view. And what it feels like is the strangulation. And sadness is part of what helps us come into the present where we can feel strangled. So the reward of being sad is that you can come to the, you know, to the intense, present, fresh, choking experience.

[57:07]

And when you're really in pain, like that, in the fresh, real pain of your life of ignorance, then you all the more need to now really practice love in order to be able to now stay with this real, fresh, vivid pain of ignorance. But now you're getting really, really close to the Buddha way. This is just like the night under the bow tree now, when you get that close. You're feeling what thirst is really like in the present. And you feel, you know, the birth, old age, sickness and death, you can feel that right there, you know, you can feel that right there in your thirst. And your ignorance is right there too.

[58:14]

It's all there. So you have to give yourself more love and more kindness and give others more love and more kindness into that situation. Now you really need to be loving. And you need to feel loved and supported too in order to stay with this more and more intense realization of the pain of ignorance. And you like, you know, you need somebody to tell you, this is good. This is good. You're on the right track. You're not seeking something other than what's going on. You're on the right track. You're just like the Buddha sitting still under the bow tree. You're on the right track. And you need to feel support of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas They want you to stay at your seat of enlightenment and not shrink away from this.

[59:16]

And if you can just be ready for this moment by moment, you will understand. And ready means ready for this one, [...] ready for this one. This is like, it's not just ready in general, it's ready for this. And ready means ready to see it. Ready means to see it. See it, see it, study it, study it, study it. And hearing myself talk like this, I said, gee, this sounds really hard. And I think, it's just about as hard as it is.

[60:24]

It's just like this. This is what it's like, I think, for me. And it seems like this is about what it's like for most other people. And it seems to me we must bring a lot of compassion to the seat in order to be able to sit there. And it seems to me that you're doing pretty well so far, but just got to keep it up and maybe even be more thorough going in the way you take care of yourself at your seat and then you're going to be able to see more and more how you see.

[61:33]

And the more you see how you see, the more you'll be able to let go of how you see. And the more you let go of how you see, the more your vision evolves in a more and more accurate mode. The more you see how you understand, your understanding evolves. Okay? Any other questions?

[62:20]

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