We use a term in, if you excuse the expression, Soto Zen, blood vein. And it also means precept vein. so that the vein of the precepts is the blood vein of the school. And we actually have a document which will actually write out a physical picture of the blood vein And on the outside it says, of the document, there's a wrapper which says, Blood Vein.

[01:13]

And around it, that name, transmitted great Bodhisattva precepts. the document looks like this, or at least the version we give initial initiation into the precepts is this document, which is called the blood vein. So this document shows a It shows a diagram which is composed of the name of the first teacher of this lineage in India, Shakyamuni Buddha, and then following him are the names of a certain lineage of his disciples in India, and then another lineage of his disciples in China.

[02:24]

And there are many lineages of disciples of Buddha in China and India, many different lineages, different sub-families within the big... Can you hear me okay, Karen? Can you hear me okay? Sigawin, is this okay? And then in China also, many lineages of disciples of Buddha, teacher-student lineages. Not all lineages have come down to the present, but many have. So this is a picture of a particular lineage which goes through China. And when it gets to China, it goes through the sixth ancestor of Zen, the the disciple of Buddha who is looked to as the source of almost all the Zen schools in China.

[03:30]

And then branching off from the sixth ancestor are two big lineages. One lineage which we say leads to the Soto school and the other is the lineage which leads to the Rinzai school. So those two lineages are listed here. And then all the ancestors in those lineages are listed here. And then from those Chinese ancestors, Soto come back and go through a Japanese ancestor, Dogen. So he inherited both those lineages. And then from him are the names of all the Japanese ancestors from the 13th century to the 20th century. And then Then start the American ancestors. So then comes Richard Baker, and then me, and then, in this case, a person who received the precepts recently, Karen Mueller back there.

[04:34]

So her name is down here at the bottom of all these for 2,500 years. People who, in our lineage, we envision that these are people who practiced the Bodhisattva precepts. we see the Buddha as a bodhisattva who practiced these bodhisattva precepts and taught these bodhisattva precepts and so on. The line symbolizing the precept vein or the blood vein of the lineage running from Shakyamuni Buddha's name or through Shakyamuni Buddha's name, sort of through the head of Shakyamuni Buddha, out of the feet of Shakyamuni Buddha into the head of his first disciple and through the feet of his first disciple and so on. This blood vein runs through the bodies and the lives of all the ancestors for 2,500 years. That's the vision of this document. And this blood vein runs back up

[05:41]

through Buddha again. So this is the circulation of these precepts of inheriting them, practicing them and sending them back to the Buddha. in the late 16th century or early 17th century, a disciple of Buddha in the Soto Zen lineage in Japan was writing some about this blood vein document which is transmitted at the time of receiving the Bodhisattva precepts.

[06:50]

So this document has been given to people who receive these bodhisattva precepts and commit to practicing them. This document of this blood vein which they join for, we don't know exactly, but I feel like at least for 800 years this has been going on. The actual form of the document varies somewhat. I've seen I've seen some of these old documents that are like 400 years old that look a little different. Like one of them I saw didn't have the Rinzai lineage of the Chinese ancestors, just the Soto. So there's some variation in the way some of the have described this transmission. But something in this line has been going on for most of the tradition for quite a while. So this priest is commenting on this document and he said that in the past and in the present, these Bodhisattva precepts have been understood as being concerned with preventing evil and stopping wrong action.

[08:19]

So these bodhisattva precepts are, some of them are like what we call prohibitory precepts, like they're phrased prohibitively, like the precept of not killing, the precept of not stealing, the precept of not misusing sexuality, the precept of not lying, the precept of not intoxicating mind or body of self or others, the precept of not slandering and so on. These are prohibitory precepts. When you hear them, it sounds like, well, that sounds like that might be understood as a or a teaching about avoiding wrong action, like avoiding killing, stopping killing, stopping lying, avoiding lying. Now, That's what a lot of people thought these Bodhisattva precepts were about, he said.

[09:25]

But he said, this is not so. That's not what the Bodhisattva precepts are about. They're not about opposing the false and the wrong. They're about ultimate reality. They're about That's what they're about. And today I'm bringing this up to you and I know this is kind of a difficult thing to understand about how, for example, a precept of not killing, the precept of not killing is about ultimate reality. rather than about trying to stop healing. So basically what I would propose to you at the beginning now is that these Bodhisattva precepts, and again what these Bodhisattva precepts, the first three are going for refuge in Buddha, going for refuge in Dharma, and going for refuge in Sangha.

[11:01]

Those are the first three. The next three are to embrace and sustain the regulations or the forms and ceremonies of your particular tradition. And the next one is to embrace all good things, all good beings. And the next one is to embrace and sustain all beings. So this is the next three, that's six. And the last ten, there's sixteen, I just mentioned, not killing, not stealing, and so on. So particularly not killing sounds like about trying to stop killing. So what I'm proposing is that this blood vein is about not trying to stop evil, but to manifest good.

[12:06]

Not trying to avoid wrong, but to manifest Buddha. The Bodhisattva precepts embodying Buddha in this world. And maybe it comes to my mind that of course Buddha's not doing evil and Buddha's not doing wrong actions. And Buddha's have taught avoid evil, but there too they're not teaching avoid evil to get people to avoid evil. Of course, it would be nice if people avoided evil. Avoiding evil is not to try to avoid evil. The teaching is to manifest Buddha. Buddha is not just avoiding evil.

[13:13]

Buddha is an activity of beneficence. It's a body which can appear in the world to bless beings and encourage beings right now. That's the main point of these precepts, is to have a body. And the Buddha body is sometimes taught as being of three kinds. One kind of Buddha body is the pure, true body of Buddha.

[14:25]

And the pure, true body of Buddha is as I say over and over, quiet and unmoving bond between all beings. That's the pure body of Buddha. And the precepts, to me, when I first heard this, surprised me. The precept that's particularly pointed to manifest the pure, true body of Buddha is the first to embrace and sustain forms and ceremonies.

[15:29]

That's not the Dharmakaya. The forms and ceremonies are not the Dharmakaya. like the ceremony we're doing here that we just did a moment ago, the recitation of the vows of the ancestor Ehe, that's not the dharmakaya. And our ceremony of introduction is not the dharmakaya. But by practicing those forms, we manifest the Dharmakaya in this world. The Dharmakaya is manifested through such practices. And when I was thinking about this a couple days ago, I thought, this reminds me of Orthodox Judaism.

[16:33]

about how there is a tension to daily life such that there are actual rituals for like how to cook and I guess how to, how husband and wife relate on Sunday and what to do with baby. and how to read a book, what to do on Shabbat, what to do not on Shabbat, how to do business, how to deal with, in this case I guess they actually have rabbis telling people how to slaughter meat. The Buddhists, we don't have a ceremony for how to slaughter meat as far as I know. Our ceremony about that is like not to do it.

[17:36]

But it's a ceremony. A ceremony of not killing. That we, you know, like we at Zen Center, we try not to kill things in our kitchen. And that is the true body of Buddha. The ungraspable cosmic reality of interrelationship among all things. which is to make, then, well, it would be to make this action a ceremony.

[18:39]

Make this action a form for realizing the Dharmakaya. In other words, the purpose of this physical action that you're witnessing in my body involved with, my hands and my posture and my voice, that these actions would be given over as a ceremony to enact the true body of Buddha. That would be the purpose. That would be the sacrament of action. And then if we did other ceremonies, like sitting cross-legged and sitting still in meditation together, that sitting meditation would be a form and a ceremony. And that would be the first bodhisattva precept, the first pure bodhisattva precept of embracing and sustaining forms and ceremonies dedicated to manifest in this world

[19:55]

the true body of Buddha. And then any kind of, and by the way, in commenting on this one, the precept of embracing and sustaining regulations and ceremonies A comment by the ancestor Dogen is, this is the abode of the laws of all Buddhas. This is the source of the laws of all Buddhas. The Dharmakaya, the true body of Buddha, does not have an abode. It doesn't even have a source. Because the Dharmakaya is everywhere And everywhere that it is includes everywhere else. It's how you include the whole universe, the whole universe, and how the whole universe includes us.

[21:04]

That relationship between us and all beings, that's the Dharmakaya. So it doesn't have an abode. It doesn't come. It doesn't go. It doesn't arise. It doesn't cease. It doesn't increase. It doesn't decrease. It doesn't not have a source. But he just said, it's the abode of the laws of all Buddhas. The abode of the laws of all Buddhas is what you're doing. You have an abode. You have a place. You have a body. When you practice the bodhisattva precept of embracing and sustaining forms and ceremonies, there is the abode of the laws of . The dharmakaya can be manifested through your body and mind and speech.

[22:08]

And in fact, the only way it manifests is through manifestation. However, it can't be manifested, but it does manifest in this way. That's the proposal. The second pure precept is to embrace and sustain all good things, but I would say good beings. Like giving is a good being. Like kindness is a good being. These bodhisattva precepts are good beings. Concentration is a good being. Wisdom is a good being. Embracing and sustaining beings is a good being.

[23:14]

All kinds of good to embrace and sustain them is the body of Buddha. This is not the true body of Buddha. This is the bliss body of Buddha. This body of Buddha, this orgasmic, blissful body of Buddha is the reward of, for example, practicing manifesting the true body of Buddha. By devoting your life to the enactment of the true body of Buddha in every action that you're involved with, the reward for that is the bliss body. is the embracing and sustaining of all good. You join the embracing and supporting and nurturing of all good as a reward for practicing manifesting the Dharmakaya. The Dharmakaya is already totally doing its thing.

[24:16]

If we manifest it through our action, if we give our action to the manifestation of it, the reward of that is that we also realize the bliss body. of the Buddha, which is the great joy of manifesting through our lives together. So it's actually manifesting our life together through our life together. It's manifesting our total life together through our kind of small version of our life together, like putting our hands together and bowing to each other. ...the small version of our life together. This is not the totality of our life together. But this can manifest the Dharmakaya. This can manifest our total life together in this small form, in this little way, which we know is a little way.

[25:26]

We know this is a ceremony. And this is how the true body of Buddha appears in the world, is by a little thing like this. Suzuki Roshi's wife, actually she was a Christian when she married Suzuki Roshi. It was an arranged marriage. They got married after both of their spouses died. When they were older, they both had already been married and had children, and they got together. It seemed like a good marriage, and she was worried that he might not accept her because she was a Christian. But I think he said, because at least you're religious. That's good enough for me. So... And then he and the congregation of his temple made her the principal of the Buddhist kindergarten.

[26:34]

So although she wasn't a Buddhist, she was a very good kindergarten principal. And one time Richard Baker's wife, Jenny, asked her, what's the most important thing to teach the children? And she said, joining the palms and bowing. She didn't say, bowing to what? She just said joining in palms and bowing. When I heard that, I thought, oh, this is the way to teach children about ultimate reality. This is the way to teach children about emptiness.

[27:39]

And the third pure precept is to embrace and sustain all beings. And that is what's called the transformation body of Buddha. Now the transformation body of Buddha, embracing and sustaining beings, that also sounds like manifesting, that the dharmakaya gets manifested into a form of somebody who's embracing and sustaining beings. So that seems like it's connected to the first one, because the first one is manifested by forms and ceremonies. And I think it is, that there is a relationship. The three bodies of Buddha are the true body, the bliss body, and the transformation body. So the Buddha gets transformed into the third body, by practicing the forms of ceremonies so that the Buddha gets transformed and appears in the world.

[28:57]

And the relationship between the Buddha and the world and the Dharmakaya is the bliss body. appreciating that relationship between how what you're doing is a transformation of the ungraspable and inconceivably big relationship you have with beings, and that actual inconceivable big relationship, realizing the relationship there through practicing the forms and ceremonies, also gives rise to the bliss of that relationship. And I was motivated partly to bring this up because someone came to me recently and said that he really wants to practice non-harming.

[30:02]

For example, in the form of not killing. And he said, I don't know if it actually happened or if he said that it could happen, that he would like inhale an insect. Inhaling the insect, the insect, I don't know if he said this, but the insect might die. Also, you might die too if it's a big one. Now, we didn't do it, but now that, you know, you inhale the insect and the insect dies and you keep living. But if it's a big insect, you might both die. Like a really big cockroach, if you just sort of like accidentally inhaled it, you and the cockroach might both die together. And then we don't say that one of you killed the other one necessarily, but we might. We might say the cockroach killed you and you killed the cockroach.

[31:07]

And there is that reality. That's the reality of what we call, that's the reality of wrong. Where you're killing insects and insects are killing you. This is wrong, right? According to this guy, he thought killing insects would be wrong. And I agree, killing insects is wrong. Killing anything is wrong. It's false. Now, I'm not saying there is no killing. I'm just saying there's a precept called not killing. And that precept is about ultimate reality. In ultimate reality, there is no killing. You have to be careful here that you think that you don't have to be careful about this precept. If an insect flies into me and I inhale it and it dies in my body, the way that that happened, the way that the insect and me together with all beings are living together,

[32:24]

one of the precepts about my actual relationship with that insect and that insect's relationship with me, one of the precepts there is that there's no killing in this relationship. Not killing is a teaching about my relationship with this mosquito or whatever it is. That I didn't kill it and that it didn't kill me, but it died and or I died, yes, But also in the Dharmakaya there's no birth and death. Now of course this person is talking about me did not want to kill the insect and does not want to kill insects that fly into his body. He doesn't want to. And I don't mean to be silly but what if the insect wanted to die in your body? What if it felt it was time to die and it wanted to die inside of a human?

[33:33]

And it checked out with all the other insects. It said, die in this human. Is that okay with you guys if I go die there? And they all said, yes. And he also checked out with this human. Is it okay if I die in you? It's going to be a little uncomfortable for me to fly up in your nose and down your throat. But is it okay to have, like, die-bomb final resting in your body? Is that okay with you? And you say, yes, I'm with you on this. And this person checks with all his family members and, you know, everybody's okay with it. Okay? And we ask the stars and the moon and the earth is ready for this interaction. And somebody may think, well, I think the insect died in this process. Well, and somebody said, that was the insect intended to die. It wanted to. The person didn't want to kill the insect, did not want the insect to die, but accepted that the insect might die if it went inside of its body and understood that the insect was ready for that and kind of wanted to die.

[34:52]

because it was getting old and, you know, thought it was time to become a Buddhist. I thought maybe if I die inside of a Bodhisattva, that would be helpful. Maybe if I practiced in this way, I can practice the first pure Bodhisattva precept and manifest the Dharmakaya in relationship to this. In acting, in acting the Buddha is embodying the Buddha because the Buddha is action. It's the activity of all. This is not a static body, this is an active body. So we enact it, we are active beings and we make our actions this way. So the precept is not about stopping killing.

[35:56]

It's about realizing what it means that there's no killing. Realizing that we're cooperating with beings. And even in birth and death, to realize no killing, not killing. Actually, it's not no killing. It's not killing. There is killing in the sense that people falsely imagine that that's the kind of relationship they have with each other, or somebody has with somebody. There is that. So we don't say there's not that. There is this false dharma, but there's a precept of not killing. And also, again, not stealing. Somebody wants to get something. They want to take it. They don't have the idea that they want to receive it. They don't have the idea they want to ask for it.

[36:57]

It doesn't occur to them to say, may I have that piece of pizza? They just think, I want it and I'm going to take it and I'm not going to ask for it and I'm going to take it and it's not being given to me and And I hate those people anyway, so they deserve for me to steal it. This kind of thing people think. So I'm not saying people don't think like that. They do. Sometimes they tell me they do. I see it in my own brain sometimes. That kind of thinking. To take, rather than say, may I have? To say, may I have, to take something, but may I have as a gift. It's false to think you take something you do not. It's false. It's evil to think you can take something.

[37:58]

Without that, we recommend practicing making what you do, not stealing. In other words, make what you do, giving. Maybe this is obvious, but it just seems so eerie to me. Intending to steal something and thinking about it in that way, yet actually all things are coming forward and creating this act of stealing and even this thought that I'm stealing this from this person I hate. and continue with the action thinking that it's all a manifestation of Buddha, which it is, in a sense.

[39:11]

But the act continues. No, I don't... I think it's not... In a way, today I would say that when we're stealing, we're not enacting Buddha. We're enacting false dharmas. That's the way we're thinking about it. Our mental action is that I'm stealing, or maybe I'm not really stealing, I'm just taking, and it's not stealing. I'm a bad person, so I don't have to think about it. But still, then later I might say, oh yeah, I did steal, you're right. I don't think that's supported by all beings. All beings support us to do that, including all Buddhists support us, but that doesn't enact... That doesn't enact Buddha. What enacts Buddha, that other person together with us would be cooperating in us receiving that thing. That would enact Buddha. But they are actually cooperating, even if they don't think they're cooperating.

[40:17]

But your action would be that cooperation. And your action would invite their participation in the celebration that they're doing together with you. So not stealing celebrates that. And doing these forms celebrates that we're doing it. then Buddha is enacted and embodied. So just to think in the midst of an act of what usually feels like stealing to me, to start thinking the thought, oh, actually, on some level I know this is all just a matter of Buddha, but still, because it all is, I'm going to continue. That's what I would say. It's like an easy trap, though. Yeah, so this is tricky. if I'm about to do something which I actually kind of the structure of my thought is something which this is a structure of stealing I see myself now taking something which I do not think is given and now I notice and I say okay now I would like this to enact to be in the enactment of the Dharmakaya I would like this to be the enactment of the Dharmakaya Dharmakaya is about

[41:41]

you know, forms and regulations. So now I'm breaking a regulation, and I would like the regulation, I would like to do this in a regular ceremonial way to an act to embody the Buddha, right while I'm doing this. So then what's going to happen to this act? It will immediately change. the karma of the mind will start changing as I start to adjust it to be the enactment of Buddha. If I'm stealing, it's quite normal that when I steal, I don't necessarily want certain people to notice. Which is a similar reason to why I stole in the first place, was maybe because I didn't want to ask, because I didn't want people to notice that I was asking for that. I want that, but I don't want them to know I want that, so I'm going to take it. It's there often when I'm stealing, and I don't usually want people to notice that I'm lying.

[42:45]

So then, but that doesn't... You see, as I start to do the thing, and I want it to be the enactment, I want it to be a ceremony to enact the Buddha, then the deception starts to... That doesn't seem to work with that. The non-inclusion of the other people in this thing doesn't work with that. So then it starts to be like, I was just about to take this, but now I want this to be the enactment. My hand's already on your robe. I'm sorry I got there before I said, may I touch you? Actually, I didn't really want to touch you. I just wanted to get your robe. And I want to tell you now, may I have your robe? As my consciousness starts, as my... tries to be the enactment of you giving me the robe, of us working together, of me not deceiving you, as it starts to enact that, right in the middle of it, things start changing.

[43:53]

So I probably might not even quite get to realizing false dharma of me taking your robe without asking. Mainly it's about the inclusion of all beings. It's mainly about the inclusion of all beings. And literally inclusion. And literally and ceremonially. It's because it's a ceremonial inclusion because you can't literally include everybody. You can only do a ceremony of including everybody. So, like, I want his robe, I start to reach for it before checking with him, and now I remember, oh, I want to include him. Even though on some level everyone already is included. Exactly. We're trying to enact that. We're trying to enact that everyone's already included. You're not going to make everybody included.

[44:55]

That's already the Dharmakaya. That's already the true body of Buddha. included in what you're doing. Some people are rubbing their face, some people are moving their clothes. Everything you're doing, everybody's included. Now, we want to enact that. But enact it in a ceremonial way. It would be fine to enact it in a non-ceremonial way. That's the way you're enacting it. You're already enacting it in that way, but that's like totally ungraspable. It's so vast. It's so subtle that it's just your life. You can't grasp it. But if you don't grasp it, you can forget it. And if you forget it, we have been... Then we started doing... So then we do things we can grasp which don't include this. Like, I can steal. I can lie. That we can grasp. But that's ignoring this. How about doing something graspable

[45:57]

to a graspable view of this thing we can't grasp. So we cannot literally include. So like I was about to say, I'm reaching for this robe, okay? Now how do I literally include everybody? I can't, but I can ritually include everybody by asking you. You can say, let's ask everybody else too, in the room, if they're here. He said, okay with all of you if I take them. He said, no, don't take it. He needs it. He's willing to give it to you, but would you give it back to him after he gives it to you quickly? That might be a ceremonial enactment of it. We cannot... Literally, because it's not a literal thing, this relationship. It's bigger than literal. It's bigger than ceremonial. The ceremonial is to manifest it in the world where we have, where we're living in the world of grasping. To have this... The Buddha paralleling our false ideas of our relationships.

[47:07]

So we're manifesting in this world relationships which don't exist. You know, we're manifesting our thinking about relationships that don't exist. We're manifesting that we're not related to somebody. So we manifest that. Okay, fine, that's our problem. Now we want to manifest that we're related to everybody. And we deal with these forms which are specifically mentioned So we're manifesting them alongside with our habitual grasping version, small, kind of twisted, separate version of our relationship. We're manifesting that all the time. We have this huge history of that. This is our suffering. Now we're going to manifest this other thing, but in a limited form, a form which actually is recognized. This is a limited version of it. And part of the confusion in Zen practice is that we have a Zazen practice, but people don't realize that that's a thimble-sized version of our meditation, which we call Zazen.

[48:22]

It's a ceremonial pipsqueak version of the actuality of the Buddhist meditation. But we need that little pipsqueak version of it. Otherwise, there's no grasping foothold to match the grasping of false dharmas. We have to have something manifesting here which isn't opposing false dharmas, but is manifesting true dharmas. Not opposing separation and isolation and independence of each other. Not opposing it. Leave it alone. It's related. We're dependent on independence. Let's manifest interdependence and let's do it in a ceremonial way because we realize this is a ceremony, not it. Okay? So in that way, I wouldn't say that everything's... Cruelty isn't manifesting Buddha. Buddha supports cruelty.

[49:24]

All beings support Buddha. When Buddha sees us being cruel, Buddha doesn't kick us out. Buddha still loves us and is right there with us, but that's not manifesting Buddha's love for us to be cruel. But if you say you're sorry for being cruel, and you mean it, really mean it, you're manifesting in this world the Dharmakaya. And especially if you know that that saying I'm sorry is not the totality of saying I'm sorry, it's just a ritual. Ceremony of I'm sorry. There's a bigger I'm sorry. Yes? I heard you say in the past that our actions mainly come out of our thoughts. In the past our actions came out of our thoughts? I heard you re-talk about intentions, that it comes from our thinking, that our actions come from our thinking. If I said that, I misspoke.

[50:25]

I don't say that our intentions come from our thinking. Our intentions are our thinking. So, if you're sitting in satsang, you're enacting the Dhammakaya, but in the meantime, there's also this intention of being an independent being, of not being somebody who passes place, of having actually thought or conceived that the manifestation will be complete. Is that totally what you're saying? There are some moments of thought or intention that are not, the actual intention is not an intention of separation. There are moments like that. Now you still may have the belief in independence. But the action is not celebrating independence, the action is celebrating and enacting interdependence.

[51:31]

That's the karma of the moment. It is given for that purpose. Now what if you have a thought from somebody and you would take that thought of being separate to someone and offer that ceremonially to the welfare of all beings with whom you are intimately connected. That's a way to take that thought and make it into an embodiment of the Dharmakaya through the ceremony of giving that as a gift to all beings. I don't know if you could follow that. I could follow that. It's a clear distinction between... But there's an active conscious giving and a body manifestation of the Dhammakaya in moments where it's not because the conceit is just overweighing the intention of the moment. Now let's just go over that again.

[52:34]

He said there's moments when there's what? When there's... I'm just hearing that there are moments, you said that it was the same bodily activity, the same speech activity, but in the thought activity, there are moments where you concede it and then you're not manifesting Siddharmakaya, and then there are moments where you... Okay, so we just stopped there. So if you have a moment... Is that the word? What does conceded mean? But you think you're separate. Yeah, you think you're separate. You're making too much out of yourself. You're imagining that you exist separate from other people. That's an exaggeration of your situation. Okay? So you've got this thing which we could call a donkey. Now, we have this expression in Zen that the horse arrives before the donkey leaves. So you've got this donkey of, I'm separate from other people, I don't need other people, I do things by myself, and also I do it better than other people.

[53:34]

Okay, we've got that one? Now the horse comes. In the form of another thought, which is, I'm going to be kind to this thought. They're not happening at the same time. They're happening at the same time. This arrives before this leaves. That's what I'm saying to you. Another way to put it is, we had the thing of mud, mud, defiled stuff, defiled action, which is celebrating that we're separate and not in cooperation with each other. Okay? The misery. And we put a seed in there. of compassion, and that seed grows in the mud. It isn't that you put the seed in and the mud goes away. The seed grows in the mud, in the donkey mud, in the donkey pollution.

[54:40]

That's where it grows. And it grows up into this wonderful lotus flower, but the lotus flower is sitting in the mud. It isn't that the lotus flower comes after the mud is eliminated and then floats off into space with its dangling and purified air. No, the roots of the great lotus blossom, the manifestation of the Dharmakaya, the roots of it are in this world of ignorance and misery and cruelty and violence and fear. That's where its roots are. It's also in the roots of sweet grandmothers who make cookies for their grandchildren in order to curry favor. It's also in little boys who make donations to Santa Claus to get their mother's attention.

[55:46]

It's not all super bad evil. It's just all the varieties of delusion, the more intense and less intense. That's where the lotus grows. It does not grow in enlightenment. Enlightenment grows in delusion. And it doesn't wait until the delusion is eliminated. And before it's fully grown, it plunges in and starts germinating in this polluted environment. It starts little roots and little sprouts right in the delusion and the consequences of delusion, which are misery. That's where it grows. and it grows on generosity, it grows on making what you're thinking a gift, which is making what you're thinking a ceremonial enactment of the actuality of the Buddha, which is giving.

[56:51]

You're not doing the totality of your giving, you're just doing a little ritual of your giving, like giving somebody of kindness, of patience, But you do that before this deluded karmic mind has evaporated. Do it right at the same time, if possible. If you miss your chance, do it later. Another one. What about Samana? What about it? Does it happen? Sudden enlightenment? She said sudden enlightenment. We'll try to find out what she's talking about. What do you mean by sudden enlightenment? Okay, well, let me know when you find out. I'll tell you if it exists. Yes? We've had this question overall for quite a few years, and it's always been with this subject.

[57:58]

It's not going to be one without the other. There's not going to be compassion without misery. Right? Yeah. Compassion, the object of compassion is suffering beings. We don't actually, some people don't like to hear this, but we don't actually hear recognition of compassion for Buddhas. It's for non-Buddhas. What I want to continue saying is that I am grateful, on one hand, that this is so, but on the other, I have a very, very hard time accepting being that the case, there will always be suffering. Being that the case, in this world, there will always be suffering. You mean because we need suffering in order to have compassion? People do bring that up sometimes.

[59:03]

What would happen if there were no suffering beings left? Then we wouldn't be able to have any compassion. Then we wouldn't be able to have Buddhas. So if there were no suffering beings, then would we have no Buddhas? If everybody was a Buddha, would we then have no Buddhas? Because compassion would be shot. We'd have Buddhas. all their compassion would be taken out of them because there would be nothing to feel it for. So I'm afraid that... Well, you don't have to go there. You don't have to go there. But if you want to go there, okay, then it's possible that if you went to the place of no-suffering beings, there would be... It wouldn't be so bad. So, yeah, but, you know, like I said, I don't spend a lot of time going there myself. I have other work to do with the suffering beings. If I start to see them kind of hard to find, I'll let you know.

[60:06]

You know, so you'll be one of the first people to get ready for the shock of running out of suffering beings. Like, you know, I'm way, way, way, way short of that, right? Although occasionally the thought does rise in my mind or somebody asks, and I'm kind of ready for the possibility of no Buddhas. And I think the Buddhas are ready for it too. Like, please don't say, please keep suffering so I won't lose my job. I love my job. I sleep all my time accepting that there will be no Buddhas without suffering. I think one was like, they had their appearance is beyond. Well, then the Dharma, we'd still have the Dharmakaya Buddha, okay? But we wouldn't have the Sambhogakaya Buddha and we wouldn't have the Nirmanakaya Buddha.

[61:10]

So it would be a compassion that sort of had no manifestation. Yeah, okay. Okay. I don't know, there were... Let's say there's Ninan and Gloria and Karen. You spoke about enacting relationships with daily activities. Yes. It reminded me of things that we do all the time, like going to the store and buying things, or buying a ticket to an event. Yes. Yes. And once we were traveling, and my uncle bought some tickets to go visit a garden. And the young man inside, this little goose, and he said in kind of fractured Italian, how are you?

[62:19]

Are you coming? And the young boy, practically conversion to tears, said, you're the first person who's greeted me all day long. And so I think about that sometimes when I'm having these interactions. People are kind of, they take the pain to be scripted or something. They have a routine that they do with everyone. Yeah. Paper, plastic, how are you? I, you know, I do the finding with me, and I feel like they're not really looking at me, but I mean. Mm-hmm. [...] How to understand that and not be depressed.

[63:37]

Then I thought, bad for me too. I missed an opportunity. What opportunity did you miss? I didn't see that you missed. Relationships. And how did you miss it? Ah, there's your mistake. That was your mistake that they weren't available. They were available. You just didn't see it. That's where you slipped. They were available. You can offer your humanness to them as a gift. But if you're trying to get something from them, you missed it. Every person you meet, the totally scripted person, you know, who's like a machine, and if somebody's watching him, and if he varies from that machine-like response, like a guard in a prison, you know, they have a way of talking to you, and they've got to talk that way.

[64:46]

If they vary from it, their supervisor may give them a hard time. So they give you this thing they're supposed to say, and you can give them a gift. and they may not be able... But if you're trying to get them to smile or be happy or acknowledge your gift, then you're not enacting the Dharmakaya. Enacting Dharmakaya is to offer something to this person without concern for what response you're going to get, without trying to get anything. Then you can go through a long line of scripted people, give each one a gift, and maybe none of them give you anything back that you can see. But the more you give, the more you see that each one has given you something back. But if you're trying to get something, you miss what they gave you. You miss that they gave you a gift back. They don't even see it.

[65:54]

If they don't see you, they give you a gift. You. They give you a gift. If they think you're a crazy embracer and sustainer of forms and ceremonies, whatever they do, whatever they do is their response to you. No matter what you do, they respond to you. And if you give to them wholeheartedly, you see that what they gave you was a gift. But if you give to them half-heartedly, in other words, half you're trying to give and half you're trying to get, or even 99% you're trying to give, you're trying to get, then you might miss that their response, and they will have a response, they cannot not have a response, their response will be a gift, is a gift, and you will see it.

[66:56]

You will see it in your wholehearted giving. They did give back to you, and you missed it because you thought they were not available, because you thought that something, you had some idea of something you were going to get. You were a little bit from your giving. You had a giving impulse. You wanted to be kind to them. You wanted to help them. But you were a little bit distracted from that basic practice by thinking of getting something back. That's my sense of how we get off from the giving. I'm talking to you, you know, and I was watching you and you were making faces like, ooh, what's he talking about? This guy is, this guy is this and this guy is that, you know. So I was watching to see if I could feel, you know, really like what you're giving me was a gift.

[67:57]

And I felt fine about what you gave back to me in this conversation. I felt like you were giving back to me because I was not trying to get you to understand what I was talking about. Yeah, it was very good because I was looking at you, and you had this look like, I don't know what he's talking about. I think it's probably not quite right. I didn't know what he looked like. Boy, that was really helpful. He didn't look like that. But I thought, well, just hang in there together, and maybe she'll never get it, but I'm just going to keep giving her gifts and notice that she's giving me back gifts in the form of, what? You know? Whatever it was, I didn't know what it was, but... Giving me back gifts. Because I wasn't trying to get you to give me a particular gift. Like agreeing with me or whatever. Yeah, and now I found that I did kind of... Now it looks like you kind of understand what I'm saying. Do you understand?

[68:59]

So it worked out that way, but it helped me that I wasn't trying to get that. Yeah, thank you. Ah, Gloria. Gloria. I was just wanting to comment, and I'm very concerned about no suffering beings. No suffering beings, yeah. And it just came to my mind that even if we were all Buddhas, that just taking a few forms has to stop first. Yeah, right, but also no human form. How about that? That might be going on quite soon. Pardon? I mean, the humans may be gone quite soon. We humans may be not living here much longer on this planet. So Buddhas won't have... Is that what you say?

[70:08]

You might be right. You might be right. Karen? I was wondering, I was thinking, when you were talking about not killing, and I was wondering how that same line of reasoning works with the perceptive body intoxication, because there are all sorts of inclusive rituals, especially this type of year, to do with alcohol in particular, and so on. I think that would be a good... ...take up in a later afternoon. Will you be here later in the afternoon? So that would be a good kind of like holiday topic... for us to consider as we launch into the holiday season about how we deal with this particular precept and how we manifest the Dharmakaya at holiday parties. Okay? And now we can have, we're going to have a holiday party called lunch. And Noah Boat's policy is not to be drinking alcohol on the property.

[71:13]

So if you want to drink alcohol you have to get special dispensation from me. Otherwise, have a nice non-alcoholic lunch, and we're going to have a work period, so you can put on your hard hats and stuff. And we'll hit the board to signal that when it's time. A little bit of work, if you want to. If you don't want to work, you don't have to. but some people like to, and some people are just actually dying to go to work. Are you one of them? No.

[71:57]

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