What's your name again? Iran. Iran asked for some exercises to help in sitting cross-legged. So I thought I'd show some, maybe each week show you one exercise to help you sit cross-legged. First one is to sit, I think, with a little, elevate your buttocks a little bit and bring the soles of your feet together. as close as is comfortable, I guess, to your groin area. And then take a hold of your toes and sit up straight. And then I would say just let gravity do the work. If you sit like this for a while, unless your legs are already on the ground, you'll feel the stretch in here.

[01:05]

Do you? So that's what it's for, is to stretch these muscles here. Because if they're tight, if your knees are up like this, then when you sit cross-legged, your knees will be off the ground. If you sit like this for like... Maybe just five minutes, three or five minutes, twice a day. In a month, you'll probably notice quite a bit of more flexibility in these muscles. Now, some people put a little bit of weight on here. I would just, you know, just to play it safe, I would just let the weight of my legs be enough. But I definitely wouldn't recommend bouncing them like this, which maybe is fun and might stretch them faster, but you can also pull your muscles, I think, that way.

[02:09]

So just sit like this and feel the stretch. And for me, this is quite a pleasant stretch. So I think that if it's a pleasant stretch, that's good. I don't think it should be really painful. If it's really painful, you might be harming your tendons or something. So just... Just do it, and if it gets painful, take a break. And also, when I finish this, I bring my legs, I take my hands like this and pull my legs up like this again, back to the center. And then straighten them. Because I find that if I straighten them from this position, sometimes it hurts my knees a little bit. So I bring them back to center, and then out. I think you can overdo this exercise by doing it too long, even though it might be quite comfortable. You can maybe stretch too much. And you might not harm these muscles, but you might loosen them up so much that your sacroiliac joint might go out if this stretch is too far ahead of other things.

[03:18]

So just three to five minutes twice a day, I think, is enough. Okay, that's the first exercise. Some people say that unless your legs are basically down on the ground, they don't recommend sitting cross-legged. I'm not that strict myself about it, but it is much more comfortable to sit cross-legged if your legs are pretty close to the ground, or if they can sit down flat. Okay, you can try that one for a week, and then next week, if you remind me, I'll show you another one. I think I'll do five then, one a week. Last week I passed out a little chart, and this is a simple version of the chart. And so the elements in the chart are the Bodhisattva precepts, and that's one element on the chart. So the practice of the Bodhisattva precepts,

[04:19]

if you practice these Bodhisattva precepts or if you practice these precepts of enlightening relationships, these 16 precepts of enlightening relationships, they are the key to being upright. And being upright, which is what I was talking to you about just a minute ago, which is basically Buddha's meditation, of being where you are without trying to get anything. which is being where you are without leaning into the future or into the past. Being where you are with no manipulation and no greed for something else or trying to avoid what is happening. This is being upright. Practicing the precepts is the key to realizing that upright way of being, and being upright is the key to practicing the precepts.

[05:22]

They support each other. So this class is about how to use these 16 precepts of an enlightening relationship to have enlightening relationships, which means to have relationships where you're being upright in the midst of the relationship. Being upright is another word for love. So, when you're upright, when you're being upright, you're at the center of your life, and your life is at the center of all beings, and everybody you meet then, you see them at the center of all beings, and you respect them, for being the center of all beings. Although you're the center of all beings too, you know everybody else is too. So you respect everybody as the center of all being. And you practice love in regard to your own life.

[06:27]

In other words, you don't try to be other than you are at the moment. You start where you are, how you are, and you respect that how you are is that you're the center of all life you're unmoving and you're upright this is how you love yourself and you have the same attitude to everybody you meet you deserve this kind of love you deserve this kind of love and everybody else deserves this kind of love and if you want to help other people and love other people you need to do this for yourself if you don't do it with ourself it interferes or undermines us doing with others if we forget that we're the center

[07:42]

we're going to forget that other people are the center. Now, some people can remember they're the center, but they forget the other people are. But, you know, I'd rather have you remember that you're the center and forget the other people than forget both, that you're the center and they're the center. If you can remember that you're the center, you might be able to remember and understand that everybody else is too. It might dawn on you that there's some similarity between you and other people. So it's a funny universe that has got infinite number of centers, and nobody's farther from the center than anybody else. But it has infinite variety too, and some people have a deeper understanding of that than others. Some people practice the Bodhisattva precepts with more diligence than others. Therefore, they have more respect for others.

[08:46]

Some people appreciate being upright more than others, therefore they appreciate the bodhisattva precepts more and so on. But everybody still is where they are and cannot be anything other than that and is receiving Buddha's love right now. So the bodhisattva precepts are the 16 precepts. The precepts of enlightening relationship are the 16 precepts. And for anybody who wasn't here last week, I have little cards here that you can pick up after class of the 16 bodhisattva precepts. So these are being upright articulated in terms of 16 teachings. These are 16 teachings on how to be upright. These are 16 teachings on how to love yourself and love others. Similarly, being upright, being balanced and still is the way to study these precepts.

[09:53]

These precepts are the curriculum, the study topic of the meditation of being upright. This is what we study. But also, being upright is the way to understand these. Because if you're not balanced when you study these, if you don't love yourself in this balanced, non-gaining way, then when you study the precepts, you'll be off-balance too. So then you'll have trouble understanding them. But if you're upright with yourself and you're upright with others, then you have a chance of seeing what these precepts are about. If you're upright with yourself, you have a chance to see your own light. And if you're upright with yourself, you have a chance to be upright with others. And if you're upright with others, you see other people's light too. When you see people's light, you practice these precepts. And when you see people's light, you see the light of the precepts.

[10:56]

In other words, you see what they mean in a particular situation. Okay, so I see some hands raised. Could you wait just a second before I call on you? And one other thing that came up last week that I want to reiterate is that if you want to practice these Bodhisattva precepts, part of the practice of bodhisattva precepts, which is not written on this little chart, and I think it's not written on the big chart either, I mean on this more detailed chart, but part of the practice of bodhisattva precepts is the practice of confession. And also part of the practice of being upright is the practice of confession. In other words, part of being balanced is to confess that you're off balance. Now when you're When you're doing a headstand or something and you fall over, you don't necessarily say, I confess I'm off balance.

[12:03]

But there is a kind of acknowledging that you're falling or that you're off balance. So part of being upright and being balanced is to confess that you're off. In other words, to recognize and admit that you're off. And in a relationship, if you feel imbalanced, if you feel prejudiced, if you feel biased, if you feel that you're trying to get something from it, or that you're trying to get away from it, then you confess that. That's part of having a balanced relationship, is to confess that you're not balanced in the relationship. And first of all, confess it to yourself, I guess, and then confess it perhaps to the other person if you think it would be helpful. And a lot of times it is, but not always. Not 100% of the time should you confess to the person with whom that you are realizing you're being unbalanced with. Same way practicing the precepts.

[13:05]

If you want to practice these precepts and you notice that you're not doing your best, you feel you're not living in accord with them, then you confess. The confession brings you back into line with the reality of the precepts and the reality of being upright. Okay? That's kind of a summary review of last week, but I wanted to start with the big picture. You have any questions about that? Yes, Martin? I'm having trouble with something. In loving myself, it's important that I accept myself the way I am, to express myself as fully as I can. Yes. And I want to practice the precepts. And I understand what you're saying about confessing. Yes. You know, if you're aware of that, you're not adhering to them. But let's just say I'm conditioned to act a certain way.

[14:09]

Yes. And I'm expressing myself like that. Yes. And if I'm expressing myself like that, there could be a little, you know, witness in the back saying, well, you shouldn't be doing that. Yes. And that's like, so the conflict is repressing who I am. Uh-huh. I'm conditioned to act. I'm acting like that, let's say, most of my life. Uh-huh. Okay. And... We got it. Did everybody get it? That's the confidence. Okay. So if you look at this chart, I think... Yeah. On this chart, this paper chart, and this slate chart, it says... It says here, training in self-expression. Training, S-E. Self-expression, okay? So Martin's saying he understands that in order to understand the precepts, you have to, like, you know, relate your behavior to the precepts.

[15:16]

And so you have to be expressing yourself in some way to have some kind of expression to relate to the precepts. Well, that's right. In fact, you do express yourself all day long, so it's good to notice that you are expressing yourself and how. And then he said, but sometimes he notices the way he's expressing himself doesn't seem to be in line with the precepts. So then he thinks, oh, so I maybe should stop myself from expressing myself. So there's a kind of a dilemma there. If you have to express yourself in order to practice the precepts, and you're expressing yourself in a way that seems to go against the precepts, then how are you going to express yourself? Okay? Part of this chart is that by training in self-expression means that you express yourself. In some cases you feel this expression is not appropriate, is not the way I really want to behave.

[16:19]

It's not really a full expression of myself. It's an expression, but it doesn't express the fullness of me. So noticing that this expression is not sort of up to snuff for Buddha is part of the training process. And so it isn't that you stop expressing yourself, you just notice that that expression was not really what I want to do with my life, how I want to live my life. You don't then stop expressing yourself, you just try again. And if it's off again, You confess it again, and try again. Hand it off again, you try again. You know, differently, maybe. And you keep working until you reach full self-expression. And full self-expression will come up at the same time as when your understanding changes. When your understanding changes. When your body and mind change by understanding how your action really happens,

[17:26]

then your action accords perfectly with the precepts. The trouble I have with that is that if I do that, if I keep on changing my expression, I see how I express and I see I'm not in line with the precepts, but at that moment when I do that, I'm not accepting who I am. Like, part of me is saying... Can you give me an example of how you're not accepting who you are? I might be irritated at someone, get angry. Okay, let's say you're irritated at someone, okay? Kind to someone. Let's say you're irritated with someone, okay? Let's take that example. So, you feel like... What wouldn't be expressing yourself if you were irritated with someone? What wouldn't be expressing yourself? I wouldn't be irritated. No, no, you are irritated with somebody. That's what's happening, okay? We've got the situation called Martin is irritated with somebody. Like maybe you're irritated with me, let's say, okay? Okay, so that's... So if you're irritated with me, then that's self-expression, okay?

[18:33]

So what's the problem? Well, let's say I'm angry, so... Let's say you're angry with me, okay? So you're feeling angry towards me, okay? So what's the problem with self-expression there? Do you feel like you're not expressing yourself when you're feeling angry towards me? I feel that I am, and this might be against the precepts of what I'm doing. So being angry... I'm not saying that... Okay, so... Well, it is. In a way, being angry with me, anyway, is against a person. I'll take it back. So let's say, you know, like I'm really being kind to you, okay? I mean, really. And you almost know it. And everybody else knows it. And you're angry at me for some reason. Like, let's say I'm really being kind to you, and you think, he's being kind to me, but how come I can't be kind like that? You know, I'm really jealous of him. I hate him for being so kind. Okay, let's say that, okay? That's an example of where you're breaking a precept.

[19:36]

Okay? You're not really being upright. You're not just standing there and saying, okay, he's being kind. You know, I wish I could be kind too, but, you know, that's it. But not even I wish I could be kind, but just there he is being kind, blah. That's it. Being upright. You're not violating the precepts, but if you lean into like, geez, when am I going to be kind or something like that, and how come he's kind, and then you start getting angry, then you're off balance, okay? So that's training in self-expression. So you're already off balance, and the characteristic of being off balance is that somebody who you should appreciate, you're actually feeling jealous of and feeling irritated by and getting angry about, okay? But that's the expression. Your self is expressing it that way. You watch that. You see that. And you notice that that's not quite the way you want to be. First of all, you're not really balanced. You're not really loving this me. You're not really loving yourself, who's not yet kind as me, maybe. Okay? You're not saying, okay, he's, you know, he's, so yeah, he's kind, or at least he's kind right now.

[20:39]

And, you know, and I don't feel so kind right now. But actually, I'm going to let myself be just as kind as I am, which is like not as kind as him. But I'm going to let myself be that kind. That's loving yourself. And loving me is letting me be just as kind as I am. So you do that, you're upright, and you're not violating the precepts, okay? But if, in fact, some kind of like irritation comes up, you know, some kind of jealousy comes up, some kind of wishing that, you know, that you were kinder than you are, which is kind of off-balance, right? So you're off-balance, so then you get irritated from being off-balance, so then you get angry, and you notice that, that's training in self-expression. As you notice that more and more how that works, you start to become more and more upright. As you start to become more and more upright, you understand more and more that whether you're angry or kind, that you're doing that together with me, for example, and with everybody else. And we start to see that. Then when you see somebody else's kind, you don't feel like you're not jealous of them anymore, because it's kind of like they can't be kind without you, and you can't be you without them being kind.

[21:48]

You see the interdependence of somebody else's kindness and your kindness. You meet somebody who's really developed, and you feel less developed, but you don't feel jealous because you're working together in this thing of them being more developed than you. They couldn't be more developed than you without you being as developed as you are. And you couldn't be less developed than them if they weren't more developed than you. Actually, you're working intimately together. So you have to meditate all day on what you say. Yes. Right. But you don't have to, and you shouldn't, act as though you can stop yourself from your current expression. You have to appreciate your current expression. In other words, that's the being upright. That's the love. So even if your current expression is off a little bit, then you have to confess it, which is an act of love. Namely, I'm off. That's not off. And I'm off in this particular way.

[22:49]

You do that over and over. That's the training in self-expression. When that gets really well developed, then the being upright takes you to DCA. In other words, takes you to see your interdependence with beings. It takes you to see that your behavior, your activity, your life, and the life of other people is inseparable. That everybody's working with you. When you see that, then you see that you're at the center of all beings, practicing together with them. Then you have Buddha's vision. Then the precepts naturally come out of that vision. And the precepts are 16 ways of talking about the enlightening relationships you have with people. And it's 16 ways of talking about how you relate to people compassionately. Was there somebody else over there? Tell me your name once again, please. Tell me your name once again. Janelle, yes.

[23:51]

I have some grasp of what you're talking about in terms of interrelationships. I've talked about this all week, and I have a real problem with dealing with this in terms of capital punishment. Well, let's talk about capital punishment. How do you do that? What's the problem there? Well, I could talk about it. I could talk about it. There are certain times when institutions and the way society Okay, so you're talking about institutions, okay? Okay, so you're not an institution, all right? So what we're talking about is what do you do in relationship to an institution? Right, so there we go. So you don't like. In other words, that's how you practice with it. So what I'm proposing is these precepts are about being upright with everything. with every living being and also with these things called institutions. These precepts are about being upright with institutions.

[24:53]

These precepts are about being upright with evil. These precepts are about loving evil. Not liking evil. Of course we don't like evil, unless we're into being evil. Well, then we like evil. Anybody here ever been into evil? Nobody's admitting that? One confession! Yay! Two! Three! Anyway, sometimes we're into evil, then we're into evil. But being into evil isn't loving evil. Indulging in evil isn't loving evil. Okay? Janelle? Okay. Loving evil... is that you don't indulge in evil is when you love evil. When you're upright with somebody or something, you don't indulge in it. You don't lean into it. When you're upright with someone, you meet them, you respect them, you don't lean into them and start, you know, feeding on them.

[25:57]

You're not a vampire. Okay? So if you meet an evil institution, you stand upright in front of it and you look at it and then maybe you have something to say. But what you say should be in line with these precepts, okay? So for example, when you look at an evil institution or evil person or evil behavior, you don't talk about, you don't slander that thing. You don't praise yourself at the expense of it. You don't say, here I am, I'm upstanding, upright, decent person, and you're an evil so-and-so. You're an evil institution, and I'm here as a good person to straighten you out. This is called praising yourself at the expense of something else. This does not enlighten the situation. This just makes the evil institution get defensive and say, oh, another crazy person. Okay, just hold on to your guns. And if she moves, lock her up. If we go to the evil institution and we look down our nose at it, or we get up above it and talk down to it, what the evil institution thinks is, this is an insane person, and they're right.

[27:16]

If we think we're better than evil people, we're insane. Now, evil people are insane too, but a little bit less sometimes because sometimes evil people know they're evil. I mean, they say, I'm evil, I'm into it, you know, that's my thing, I can't get out of it, you know, I'm totally evil. They're a little bit honest. But if we look down on them, we're kind of crazy. In other words, kind of crazy means we're not practicing these precepts. When you practice these precepts, you don't look down on people. You don't look down on yourself either. You admit your own shortcomings. You don't go around talking about other people's shortcomings when you practice these precepts. So if you run into evil, you love it, which means you don't try to change it. What do you do with it? You try to teach it. How do you teach it? You teach it good. What's good? Being upright. You show it respect. Here's somebody like into evil and somebody walks up and shows them respect and says, are you making a mistake?

[28:20]

Don't you realize I'm into evil? How come you respect me? People that are into evil kind of know it. People who, you know, the people who, like, they just did execution at San Quentin, the people who killed that guy, they kind of know that that was not good. They got all these excuses for it, right? But they know it's not good. You don't have to tell them. You don't have to go and say, thou shalt not kill. They know that. But they're doing it anyway for various reasons, right? Various reasons. What's going to convert them? The only thing that's going to convert them, well, not the only thing, the main thing that will definitely, that can definitely get them to turn is a tremendous amount of love. Love can convert people from love. Murder, for example. Maybe something else can, too. But basically they're derivatives of love.

[29:22]

So that's what I have to say about that, okay? And you said it's tough. I didn't say it was easy. It's not easy to be upright in the face of your own evil. But it is easy to, like, lean into your evil, to indulge in your evil, or to try to deny it and run away from it. Those two are easy. But to be intimate with it and face it means you have to be... The thing about indulging in it is you just lean into it and then you're done. Just dive into it and swim in it. You don't have to pay attention. And running away too and not pretending like you're not evil. Just turn away once and then you're checked out. That's it. You're out to lunch. But being upright, you have to do it over and over and over and over, moment after moment, because you're not like just plunging into it. You're not closing your eyes and saying, okay, I'll just do it. Or, hey, I'm not into that. Being upright means moment by moment effort to notice how it's manifesting now. It's much easier just to say, oh, that's Eric, I'm done with that.

[30:26]

But like, that's Eric, I mean, well, what is Eric? What [...] is Eric? This takes a lot more effort than, that's Eric, or that's not Eric. Then that's very easy, lazy. But to meet the situation without putting it in a box and saying it's that, or putting it in a box and saying it's not that, it's much harder. So being upright, loving people is a lot more work than attaching to them or rejecting them. And loving yourself doesn't mean you like yourself or dislike yourself. It just means you're taking care of yourself. You're being careful with yourself. You're being careful with others. You're being careful with evil. You're being careful with good. So careful, careful, careful leads to carefree. We're not careless, we're careful. And we practice being careful, and finally we're carefree.

[31:28]

After a while you don't have to care anymore. The Buddha doesn't really care, you know? Buddha's just intimate with everything. But to work your way to being free of cares, you have to be careful. which means you have to be loving. Okay? Elena? The question is connected with Martin. Martin's question. Okay. Connected. There's a change, somewhat of a change. Suppose that you're very worried about something to be loved. Suppose you're worried about someone you love. Worry is not really upright.

[32:33]

Caring about people, being careful of people can be upright, but worrying is a little bit off. But suppose you are. So then you confess I'm worrying. And maybe again, I confess I'm worrying. And then again, I confess I'm worrying. Okay, yes? So now you're obsessive worrying. Not just one moment of worrying, but repetitive worrying, yes? And you notice how bad that is. That's good that you notice how bad it is, yes. This is good. Noticing it, however, noticing that you're worrying, and noticing that you're worrying repetitively, and noticing how bad it is for you, and perhaps how bad it is for somebody else, noticing that is not worrying. Noticing it is pretty close to being upright, and noticing it is pretty close to love. So you can love yourself while you notice that you're on a worry trip.

[33:35]

And the noticing will gradually, noticing it, He's very close to confessing it. So noticing and confessing, noticing and confessing, confessing and noticing, confessing and noticing, gradually that may transform the worry into being not worrying. But now meeting the situation, it doesn't mean you run away from the situation. So worrying is nice because you're there, but now you've got to come back from worrying to just being intimate with it. So, if you're worrying and you notice the consequences of the worrying, you're getting more intimate with the situation. And noticing the consequences will transform your consciousness. One more step? Yes, you can. Yes, you may. Yes. Can you hear her okay?

[34:47]

Okay. You say, this is truly crazy, I will not worry anymore? How about this is truly crazy, I vow to not worry anymore, but I probably will, but I'd like to not to, and I really would like to stop being crazy, but I also will be patient with myself if I am crazy. Or I'll try to be patient with myself if I notice I'm crazy. And I hope that I will notice that I'm being crazy when I am crazy. And I hope I notice it. I hope I'm patient with it. And also, I think it makes sense to me that if I notice it and I'm patient with it, I will become free of my craziness. I trust awareness and honesty as liberating factors in my life.

[35:49]

You can say that to yourself. Okay? Is that right? Some problem there? Did you not get that? You looked like you didn't get it. Yes, I was worried. You were worried. There you go. So what do we do? We say, let's start again. I noticed I'm worried. And that's pretty good. I noticed I was worried. And I also noticed that something was happening over there because you looked funny. You didn't look like, well, that's neat. I think I'll practice that way. You looked like, well, wait a minute. There's some problem here. But you knew it. You knew that you thought there was some problem. So then you're doing the practice. Okay? Yes? Sometimes I'm in a lucky state, a less sleep state.

[37:00]

Sometimes you're in a lucky state, a fortunate state. Yes. I'm less asleep than usual. You're more awake than usual and less asleep at the same time. In those moments, I notice the arising of impulses. Because you're awake, you notice the arising of impulses. I guess so. I'm not totally asleep. Yes. Martin has just insulted me. Yes, for example. I see an impulse to retaliate. You see an impulse to retaliate against his insult. Yes. As I see this, something intercepts the expression of the retaliation. Yes. Which may be a punch in the nose. Yes. Right. What is it?

[38:03]

In this case, it may be my wish to protect life, perhaps. Could be the wish to protect life, yes. So either I remain silent or I say something much milder than what I feel the impulse to say. Yes. Until now, I thought that this kind of change in my self-expression was desirable. But unless I misunderstood you, you said 15 minutes ago that I should not interfere with my self-expression. Yes? But I am interfering with myself. Well, interfering is not necessarily the same as intercepting. Well, an impulse arises.

[39:11]

Yeah, so an impulse arises, okay? I see the impulse. And you see the impulse, and you see the impulse might lead to somebody being harmed. And then there's also an interest in not harming life. So both of those things are you. Fred is capable of appreciating Martin's life and also having the thought of making a little dent in Martin's life. So both those things are part of Fred. The resolution of a strong appreciation of Martin's life and a fairly strong impulse to hurt him might be that you would say something like, Martin, I have something to say to you. Would you like to hear it? And he might say, yes. Say, well, I feel insulted by what you just said. He might say that. And that could be where you're at. But if, in fact, you feel hurt by him, and you feel the impulse to hurt him back, and there's no appreciation for him, okay, then you probably will actually hurt him.

[40:27]

And that will be your self-expression. Because there's no, without some appreciation and respect for him, if you only feel, if all that's going on in your head is feeling hurt and wanting to retaliate, then probably in that scenario, in that picture of that consciousness, that consciousness will hurt him. But if that conscience also contains an appreciation for him, in that picture, it's not that you wouldn't be expressing yourself, but who you are as a person who both appreciates him and is also irritated and angry with him and feeling hurt by him. The resolution of that might be not saying something or saying something even helpful, perhaps, but still a little bit irritated. You might even say, you know, I feel like I'd like to retaliate, but I'm just going to tell you that I feel like retaliating rather than actually retaliating. Sometimes I feel like I'd like to strangle you right now, but I'm just going to tell you that, and that doesn't hurt so much. But that could be self-expression, and that could be actually almost full self-expression.

[41:27]

So I don't feel like you would be disrespecting yourself or not expressing yourself in that case. And you would be training. in full self-expression, and you might even come to see in cases like that, which some people do, how wonderful it is, actually, that he insulted you and gave you a chance to do some really new thing. We feel like, my God, in the past I would have, like, just, you know, leveled him. But now, working together, he's actually helping me understand my mind. He's actually aiding me, even though what he did was an insult, it seemed, It actually is part of the process of me waking up. And therefore I appreciate him even more. But also I'm understanding that my mind is more complex. And I appreciate that I'm more aware of what I'm doing now. And I appreciate that I'm aware that I'm going to hurt.

[42:30]

I'm aware that when I feel threatened. And I'm aware when I feel vengeful. I'm aware of all this stuff. I'm starting to wake up. And also I notice when I wake up, now do I notice these... these habitual protective responses, but I also notice that noticing these responses is part of my appreciation of my own consciousness. That I'm actually interested in the way my mind works. I actually am interested in my life. I'm actually attending to my own life. And by attending to my feelings of hurt and threat and disrespect that I feel I'm getting from other people, And the way my mind works, I appreciate this. I'm also noticing that I actually appreciate other people's lives, too. Matter of fact, I even appreciate the life of those who I think are hurting me. Actually, we do. Our Buddha does appreciate life in all its forms. But appreciation doesn't mean like. It doesn't mean you like people to insult you.

[43:32]

It doesn't mean you like people to be mean to you. It means you respect. the life that's manifesting in an insulting form. You respect it. You love it. You attend to it. And you attend to your physical reaction to it. So people speak harshly to you, you respect that harsh speech. You respect the pain you feel when spoken to harshly. You respect the cruelty that's expressed towards you and you respect the way you feel when you're treated cruelly. You respect both of those, both the thing done to you and the way you feel about it. And by respecting those things and everything else, you start to become enlightened. And because you start to become enlightened, you start to develop an enlightening relationship with this person who's being cruel to you. In other words, this person who's being cruel to you, you then respond to them with love.

[44:33]

And it's not exactly that, you know, it's a little bit like revenge. You know, it's kind of like, well, you know, I can like smash them. But they're just going to recover and get out of the hospital and come and shoot me. Now, on the other hand, if I love them, they're going to be permanently disabled. They're never going to be able to hurt me again. But that's not real love. Real love is you don't think about how powerful it is. You really just feel it. And you realize it feels really good to love people, not just because it's going to convert them and break down their evil habits, not just because of that. You want to do that for them, not for the fact that you will be happier too. But in fact, you are happy while you're doing it. It feels good to treat people in a way that breaks down their cruelty. But if you don't take care of yourself when they're cruel to you, and you don't respect them when they're cruel to you, then things don't go so well.

[45:39]

But then that's part of the training, too, is you're trying to practice these enlightening precepts, you're trying to be upright, but when the pain hits the body, we get knocked off balance, you know, and then we come back sometimes with a defensive... A defensive response rather than kind of like, whoa, boy, this is really hard to respect. Whoa, wow. Oh, geez, this hurts so much. How am I going to say thank you for this? Oh, my God, it hurts so much. Where's the thank you? I know there's supposed to be one around here somewhere. Oh, there it is. And probably Rex shouldn't say thank you because he'll think I'm being sarcastic. Because if somebody really hurts you and you say thank you, then they think you're teasing them like, you can't hurt me, thank you. But it's more like, you know, you feel it in your heart. I appreciate your life. And then from that place, you maybe have something to say.

[46:43]

Which might be, I don't know what it would be, you know. Could be anything. But it's love. And they might get it. They might see it. And if they see it, they get converted. And then they stop being so cruel to you. They stop being so cruel to themselves gradually. Maybe all of a sudden. There are stories, like I maybe told you the story. I told you about the Buddha converting a serial killer. Did I tell you about that? I mean, now this person had a kind of good background. Before he was a serial killer, he was actually quite a good person, and then he went nuts by various terrible karmic twists and turns. He was driven insane and became a serial killer. The Buddha could see that he had some good in his background, and he could be converted, and the Buddha converted him like, you know, in the story, converted him like in five minutes or something. He snapped the guy out of it, and the guy became a great, good monk.

[47:55]

And there are other stories of people who do really, really evil things who have been converted by very loving beings. One of the greatest teachers in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, Milarepa, was a masked murderer. He did a lot of black magic. He was a very powerful magician, and he killed people. He was converted by love of his teacher, Marpa, and he became a great loving being, but he was converted by love. Now, the way he was converted by love was also a rigorous training program, too. But anyway, the point is that his teacher saw him and saw that he could. Any living being can be taught Anybody can be snapped out of their evil ways if you meet them, you know, really meet them, really look at who they are and really meet them. It isn't liking them, oh yeah, yeah, it's like really meet them, see where they're at, but you have to see where you're at in order to meet somebody else.

[48:59]

Like there's a story in the scriptures, I don't know where it is exactly, but it's just, maybe I don't know if I told you, there's a story about a father-daughter tumbling team And the daughter's standing up on top of the father, you know. And the father says, daughter, be careful up there. And the daughter says, you be careful. I'm okay, but if you're not careful, I'm in trouble. So we can't help other people if we don't take care of ourself. And also, we can't take care of ourself if we don't take care of other people. So you have to both respect yourself and respect others. But since you're always there, start with yourself. And then the people will show up. They will show up. If you're respecting yourself, they'll come. Sometimes they come even when you're not respecting yourself, which is, you know, what that's like. You don't respect yourself, they come, you don't respect them. And you might, again, if you like yourself, you can like yourself but not respect yourself.

[50:07]

You can be really enamored with yourself and indulge yourself, but that's not really respecting yourself. You can be all kind of curled up and lazy. That's not really respecting yourself. Respecting yourself is giving yourself a chance to fully express yourself, to be what you can be. That's really respecting yourself. And then you're ready to respect other people. Does that make sense? Yes? Would you tell me your name again? Richard. Richard. Rich. Would you say it again? I didn't quite get it. If I'm hating, am I being evil or is that quite a matter of degree? I think hating is kind of an evil, yeah.

[51:10]

When I hear the word evil, I always think that it's live backwards. Okay? So hating is kind of like living backward. And also lust and attachment is kind of like living backward. They're both kind of like evil. They're both kind of like disrespect, right? Buddha doesn't really hate any living being. Buddha appreciates all living beings, even living beings when they're manifesting in forms where they're being evil. Like again, Buddha sees a serial killer, a mass murderer, what does Buddha do? If Buddha sees a way to help the person, Buddha wants to help the person. Buddha wants to help everybody, no matter how bad they are. Now some people are so bad that they're not even in the mood for Buddha to help them. Okay? So Buddha wants to help them, though, but Buddha doesn't do anything much because they're not even looking. So Buddha doesn't run over and stick his face in front of somebody who's so insane that they can't even notice who's there.

[52:11]

Right? But he wants to help them. So when we hate something in ourself or others, we're a little cuckoo. We're a little insane. In other words, we're a little unenlightened or quite unenlightened. So in a sense... What Buddha is, Buddha is really living. And when we're not really living, we're not enlightened. And so even little, there can be little evils, like a little bit of aversion towards something. You know? Like a little bit of aversion towards some state. Or there can be strong aversion, so strong you want to hurt yourself for what you're doing. So, you know, a little impatience and a little irritation and a little... negative judgment about yourself, it's a little bit evil. Just like a little bit of appreciation for yourself is a little bit good, is a little bit enlightened. Again, look at the precepts. Not being angry, okay? Not slandering, not praising yourself at the expense of others, okay?

[53:15]

Those apply to ourselves and to others. When we hate something, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're putting ourself above it, but it often does. Even with yourself, you may feel like, well, I'm a pretty good person, and now I'm behaving really badly, so I hate myself when I'm acting like this. Rather than, I'm a pretty good person. As a matter of fact, I have the potential to be a Buddha. I heard that about Buddha said that I have within me the potential to be a Buddha, and now I'm acting like a selfish, I'm just being dishonest about what's going on, and impatient, and so on and so forth, and I hate when I'm like that. Well, how about I have the potential to be a Buddha, now I'm acting selfishly, and I'm acting in a petty way, in an impatient way, and I notice that I'm acting that way, and I'm glad that I'm noticing that I'm acting that way, and I'm going to keep noticing if I act that way, and I'm going to see how that works. Because I understand that observing myself, even when I'm doing petty, selfish, small-scale or big-scale evils, that studying that and becoming intimate with that will liberate me from that evil.

[54:27]

But again, studying it is again starting to respect it. You're being disrespectful, then you react to that by being respectful enough to study your disrespect, which again is confession, confession and come back to being upright. So you can recover. By admitting when you're off, you recover. And you're back on track. Okay? What's your name again? Isabella. Isabella? The other day, I was talking to my younger brother. He was talking about anger. He said, Mom, I internalize my anger. I don't really know what to do with it. And I was like, you know, wanted to tell him, well, don't internalize it, you know, respect your anger, but I wanted also to tell him then what to do with it after respecting it, and I didn't really know what to say to him. Okay, so respected means, you know, give it your attention, okay?

[55:31]

Another thing you might want, you might consider doing is saying, if it would help you, I would be... I don't know if this is where you're at, but I might say it to him, if it would help you, you could come and tell me when you're feeling it, and that might help you also become more aware of it. Because if you can become aware of it, then you're going to be less pushed around by it. One time when my daughter was... I told this story, probably you've all heard this story ten times, but anyway, one time when my daughter was about eight, a friend of hers stayed over, and then, did you hear the story already? And then when her mother came to pick her up, her friend went and got in her mother's lap, and then her friend and her mother left. And after she left, my daughter said to my wife, She did that just to make me angry, you know, sitting on her mom's lap. Just to make me jealous and angry.

[56:36]

So then later my daughter was sitting on my lap and my wife said, are you doing that just to make me jealous and angry? And my daughter said, okay, I'll give her another chance. And then she said, I'll watch her in school the next, tomorrow. So then she came home from school. He said, well, how did it go? Did you watch your friend at school? And she said, yeah, I watched her. I said, what did you see? She said, I saw that I was getting angry for what I was thinking about her. So kids, if you can get kids to, like, look, they can start learning about how their anger works and become gradually more and more free of it. They can start becoming enlightened at an earlier age if we can help them, like, look at their anger. In other words, don't tell me you shouldn't have the anger or get rid of the anger, but study it, become aware of it. And if it would help you, you can tell me about it, and we can talk about how you can be aware of it. And the more aware you are of anger, the closer you are to being free of it.

[57:37]

And when you're free of it, then when it comes, you're free of it. Plus, it kind of doesn't come anymore when you're really free of it. But if you can handle it properly, it doesn't matter so much whether it comes or not. Because when it comes and you're upright with it, it doesn't possess you and make you into a slave of anger. And same with greed. You're just kind of like, whoa, the greed is here, you know. But you stay balanced, you know. You stay balanced and you flow with it. But you don't get flipped through the air and hurt yourself. Something like that I would say to him. Also, I guess I would, you know, with an adult or a child, when someone is doing that, I would say, well, first of all, it's good that you noticed it. Do you know some people are angry and don't know they're angry? Some adults? I mean, they're really angry. And if you ask them, they say no. And they're not just lying.

[58:38]

They don't know that they're angry. But pretty clearly they are. Sometimes when people are angry, sometimes you think people are angry and you check with them and they tell you what's going on with them and you realize that they're not angry. Like they say, no, I'm not angry, I'm just really depressed. They give you information such that you see that that appearance doesn't have to be angry. But sometimes when you check and they say they're not angry, then you know they're angry by the way that they tell you they're not. And sometimes I find out years later that the person realizes they were angry on that occasion. So when a person is aware that they're angry and can tell you about it, it's pretty good. So you can praise him for... I think you can legitimately praise him for being that aware and encourage him to continue his... his observation and his study of his own anger with the hope that he'll become more and more skillful handling it, so that it'll become like a dangerous thing that he handles skillfully.

[59:48]

So there's a lot of dangerous things in our body and mind, a lot of dangerous things, a lot of dangerous impulses, but we can become so skillful at handling them that we don't hurt ourselves or others with them. Like you can learn to handle knives and other sharp tools or potentially dangerous tools. You can learn to handle them in such a way that you don't hurt yourself and you don't hurt others. And then they function. And sometimes the way they function is you set them down. But then if somebody accidentally bumps into a knife and it's flying through the air, you can sometimes get out of the way or catch it to protect people. So there's some eventualities such as these dangerous emotions and feelings do get activated in various ways, but by handling them hundreds and thousands of times, you can learn to become skillful. But you have to be mindful of the interaction in order to learn. And mindful means you're aware, but also that you're being upright.

[60:53]

When you meet these dangerous emotions in upright fashion, you learn. Learning and being upright, learning and loving, are basically the same thing. When you love evil, not like evil, but when you love evil, when you respect evil, when you study evil, when you're balanced with evil, you learn about evil. When you learn about evil, you become free of evil. And also with good. It isn't that you indulge in good and be off balance with good, and that you like good, okay? You don't like good, either, or dislike good. You love good. And you even become free of good when you love good. So becoming free of evil by loving it is good. And becoming free of good is even better. So we don't want to be attached to good and rejecting evil. We want to become free of evil and free of good by basically treating them the same.

[61:59]

loving everything as a manifestation of life, which means we study everything. We don't just study good, we study evil. We don't just study evil, we study good. We don't say, okay, good, that's fine, leave it alone. No, you have to watch good too. Good deserves your attention, but no more or less than evil. Does that make sense? A little unusual, but does it make sense? Any questions about that? So, I'm not complaining, but I was going to talk about the first precept of enlightening relationships tonight called taking refuge in Buddha. Okay? I was going to talk about it in that language of taking refuge in Buddha, and I just did.

[63:00]

So I'm a success. But what I would like to say is that I was actually talking about it, but I didn't say so. I was talking about taking refuge in Buddha. How was I talking about taking refuge in Buddha? Do you know how I was? Hmm? By being upright is taking refuge in Buddha. By practicing love with everything you meet is taking refuge in Buddha. By being balanced in every encounter with everything you're aware of is to take refuge in Buddha. And also to take refuge in Buddha is, before you take refuge in Buddha, you confess any leanings away from Buddha, any anger or attachment, any indulgement or avoidance of what's happening, any disrespect of life, you confess.

[64:10]

So in the ceremony when we take refuge, we confess, I have for a long time, you know, veered away from just respecting all life. I have made various mistakes where I haven't really revered every manifestation of life as sacred and precious and wonderful. I have done that. So now I'm ready to take refuge in Buddha. Now I'm ready to go back to... respecting all life, loving all things, converting all beings to enlightenment. So I was talking about taking refuge in Buddha. So I'd like you this week to think about taking refuge in Buddha, which means to go back home to Buddha. Think about going back home to Buddha. Going back home to what? To being Buddha. to sitting at the center of all beings, to practicing together with everyone, to respecting all life, all life, including everything that you are, moment by moment.

[65:20]

So please meditate on taking refuge in Buddha. Please meditate on making Buddha, making enlightenment, your refuge, your place of safety, your home. And also, since you sometimes veer away from that, remember about going back to that home. So please meditate on this first precept of enlightening relationships. And if you feel like you have taken refuge in Buddha, then watch to see what kind of relationships do you have with people and yourself, with others and yourself. What kind of relationships do you have when you've taken refuge? When you're home, with Buddha, what kind of relationships you have with people. Are they the kind of relationships you want then? And when you veer away from that being home with Buddha, are those the kind of relationships you want? Check it out. Okay? And maybe you can give a report next week. So shall we stand up and sit down?

[66:26]

Stand up and then sit down for a little bit of sitting meditation.

[66:31]

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