For more than a year in this temple, we have been reading and reciting and discussing a great scripture, which is called the Great Vast Buddha Flower Adornment Scripture. In English, we say it that way. or in Sanskrit, Maha Vipulya Buddha of Atamsaka Sutra. Last time we met here, we discussed Book Nine, of this great scripture which is translated into English from Chinese as Radiant Awakening.

[01:13]

We brought a little bit of the teachings of Radiant Awakening in that last meeting we had here. Some of you were here, some of you weren't. If our good health continues, we will continue to study that chapter and many others. This time, I wish to bring up the next book, which, after book nine, comes book ten. In book nine, the Bodhisattva Manjushri, the bodhisattva of great wisdom, teaches us about this great awakening.

[02:18]

Now in this chapter 10, book 10, Manjushri asks questions He has these wonderful multifaceted questions. I think there's seven, I mean, ten sets of questions. Each set of questions has like maybe ten questions, setting up this section. And then after he asks this question to great bodhisattvas. He's a great bodhisattva and he asks questions to great bodhisattvas. So this book, this chapter is called A Bodhisattva Asks for Clarifications. a great bodhisattva is asking for clarification.

[03:29]

And he addresses his questions to other great bodhisattvas. And the first bodhisattva he questions, the first bodhisattva he asks for clarification, after he asks his great question, that bodhisattva says, benevolent one. So the benevolent bodhisattva says to the benevolent bodhisattva, benevolent one, you ask the meaning of this, of all these questions, to awaken all the ignorant. I will answer according to the essence. Listen clearly benevolent one. A benevolent one, a bodhisattva of great wisdom, asks another benevolent one to clarify questions.

[04:42]

Now one might say, well, Manjushri already knows the answer to all his questions. He's a great questioner and he also understands he knows the answers to them. And I would say, Yes, he does. But there's no end to the answers. And there's no end to him asking for clarification about these questions. Once again, here's a great awakening being devoted to the welfare of the world, which is full of ignorant people who are suffering in extreme ways. And in his benevolence, he wants to bring questions up and ask them in this world in order to help ignorant beings, to awaken them.

[05:43]

And then the benevolent one, he questions says, listen, listen carefully. Kind of like... I'm a little surprised to say that when a great bodhisattva asks a question to another great bodhisattva, I'm a little surprised that the one who's being questioned says, listen carefully. I mean, like... Anyway, that's repeated over and over throughout this chapter. After Manjushri asked the question to another great bodhisattva, they say, listen carefully. I'm going to give you what you asked for. I'm going to respond a little. I'm going to answer your question, but my answers are going to be like a drop of the ocean. The answers of these bodhisattvas come in the form of ten four-line verses.

[06:52]

That's the standard pattern of this chapter and many others. So Manjushri asks the question of the great bodhisattva, and the great bodhisattva says, I'll answer you, and then gives him ten verses of answers. So again, this not very long chapter has these ten sections of ten verses in response to about a hundred questions.

[08:06]

And I kind of feel like, yeah, we could spend at least the next ten months on this chapter, dealing with each of the ones of the ten sections a month. And I ask your permission to not bring up the first question and not bring up the second question, and not bring up the third question. Oh, yeah, bring up the third question. No, excuse me. Not bring up the first question, not bring up the second question, not bring up the third question, but bring up the fourth question. May I? Hopefully someday we can go back and look at the first, it's not actually the first question, it's the first group of questions. We can go back and look at the earlier three groups of questions.

[09:16]

So the group of questions I want to bring up now are the group of questions which Manjushri asked the great Bodhisattva foremost in vision. foremost in vision. Another translation is foremost eyes. In this little temple here, we have on this altar here, a statue of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion to the Buddhist left. We call this statue in Sanskrit, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. In Chinese we say Guan Yin, in Japanese, Kanan.

[10:20]

The Bodhisattva of Great Compassion we have on this altar. And upstairs we have a room, a meditation room, where there's many statues of Avalokiteshvara. It's the Great Compassion Room with lots of statues of the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion. This Bodhisattva of Great Compassion is the topic or the main figure of one of the chapters of the Lotus Sutra. And in that chapter, there's a discussion of the great function, the great power of remembering and inviting, inviting, inviting, inviting what?

[11:24]

Inviting the bodhisattva of great compassion. Recalling and inviting the bodhisattva of great compassion. into this world, into this body, into this mind. Once again, the chapter is about the great virtue, the great merit of making this invitation to this bodhisattva over and over again. Are you following me so far? We have a chant which we often do, which in Japanese we say, it's called Enmei Juku Kanan Go. In English we say, the ten-verse sutra on extending life. And in that sutra, it starts out with saying, Kanzayan. It starts out by saying, Avalokiteshvara.

[12:25]

Kind of yelling. Kind of, Sincerely inviting Avalokiteshvara to come. And then it says, homage to Buddha. But first we're inviting the great Bodhisattva to come. That's how the sutra starts. And it's just ten lines. And the last part of the sutra says, day and night, Avalokiteshvara, day and night, the observer of the cries of the world. That's the English translation of Abalokiteshvara, the observer of the cries of the world. Day and night recall this great compassionate being, this great compassionate observation, this great compassionate observing. Day and night

[13:30]

Invoke, invite, remember, recall this great compassion. And then it says, moment by moment, moment by moment, recall Avalokiteshvara. And at the end, and going back to the Lotus Sutra, at the end of the chapter, it's describing Avalokiteshvara. So we're being encouraged to remember Avalokiteshvara. And then there's a description of Avalokiteshvara, which is eyes of compassion, observe living beings, assembling an ocean of blessing beyond measure.

[14:38]

So the section of this chapter 10, book 10, that I want to bring up is about the ocean or the field of blessing of the Buddha, of the bodhisattvas. many of us are horrified by the suffering of this world. Deeply pained to see the great suffering of this world and people who seem to be contributing to it. So I actually feel a wish to create a field of blessing in this world, in this body and mind, in this community, in this great community.

[16:00]

I wish to work and practice in a way that creates a field of blessing in the world of suffering. Of course, we might have other wishes besides creating a field of blessing in this world of suffering. But I'm just focusing on this particular field of blessing. The field of blessing that comes by observing all suffering, ignorant living beings. How that happens? it doesn't say in the sutra, it says, eyes of compassion observe living beings assembling an ocean of blessing beyond measure.

[17:04]

It doesn't say. And the way it's assembled, the sutra does not say, and at that point it does not say, but I'm going to say it for you and for the sutra. The way that this assembly is going on is inconceivable. It's inconceivable. And the sutra says, it is what happens when there is observing sentient beings with eyes of compassion. That's what happens. There's other parts of the sutra, the Lotus Sutra, which mention that the whole teaching of this sutra is inconceivable. The name of the sutra could be the great inconceivable lotus flower scripture. It's an inconceivable dharma, but that's the dharma.

[18:07]

And the dharma is observing sentient beings with eyes of compassion creates an ocean of blessing in the field of beings who are calling for compassion. It doesn't say observing them gets rid of the beings. It's not like we observe sentient beings and they disappear. It's that we observe them and with them we create a boundless field of blessings. How that is created is inconceivable and also the field of blessings is inconceivable. is boundless in the way that there's no end to it, but it's also boundlessness in the way that it can be anything. This field of blessing, this field of merit, can be anything.

[19:14]

There's nothing it can't be. There's nothing that can't be a blessing. The eyes of compassion realize this possibility This is the Buddha's field of blessing. There may be others, but the Buddha's field of blessing is beyond measure and inconceivable and ungraspable, and it is blessing. It's blessing in the world of suffering. We got the suffering. Buddha's not in charge. Bodhisattvas are not in charge of making the suffering. It's being given to them. Buddhas are being given all this suffering. Now Buddhas respond. Bodhisattvas respond with compassion and create blessings in this world. And one of the blessings is the observation. Another blessing is people become free of suffering right in the world of suffering.

[20:21]

Another blessing is people are filled with joy as they observe suffering beings that they care about. And they feel joy that as they're observing suffering beings, they're in pain. They're in pain because they love these sentient beings. and that pain is part of their great joy. I heard, I thought I heard the Dalai Lama saying one time, etymologizing the Sanskrit word for compassion, karuna, he etymologized it by saying, it means dented happiness. The Buddha's compassion is great happiness with all these dents in it. All beings are denting it, and that just makes it more joyful. It's not like this perfectly round, untouched thing.

[21:27]

It's a thing that's messed up and dented by all beings, and it is joyful. It is the greatest joy. This compassion is not trying to get rid of the dents. It's not trying to get rid of the suffering beings. It's trying to liberate them with this compassion. And that creates blessings in this world. Also, as a number of you know, we do a robe chant when we put on our traditional Buddhist robe. And I'll do the English. How great! The robe of liberation. So I'm wearing this robe of liberation. Xia Ying is wearing the robe of liberation. Barbara is wearing the robe.

[22:30]

Dennis is. Sonia is. Ted is. Scott is. Many people in this room are wearing this robe of liberation. It's so great. That's what the first line of the verse says. The next line is, this is the one I want to address today, a field of virtue without any marks. A field of virtue a field of blessing that has no marks, has no characteristics. If you look at the different robes, they look different. But all the differences which you can see, all those different signs of the way they appear, the virtue is beyond the shape and the sewing of the robe.

[23:34]

The robe is a robe of an inconceivable field of blessing. It's Buddha's blessing, which is not bounded by anybody's idea of what blessing is. Again, most people, if they look at some of these Buddhist robes, they might not be able to see this is a field of blessing. They might not be able to see it. What about these robes that these people are wearing as a blessing? The chant says, this robe is an inconceivable field of blessing beyond any ideas of what blessing is or what the robe is. Because the blessing is inconceivable and ungraspable, it can adapt to the needs of beings. It's not a fixed thing, because that might not be appropriate for somebody, and certainly not appropriate for everybody.

[24:37]

But this blessing is what is appropriate to liberate different individuals. So we have the opportunity to create these fields of blessing together, each of us contributing our eyes of compassion to the process of creating a field of blessing in this world. And the people in this assembly right here everybody to some extent has eyes of compassion. But perhaps some of us, like me, occasionally forget that these eyes are eyes of compassion, that these eyes are eyes for compassion, these eyes are eyes of compassion, that that's what they're for.

[25:52]

They're for caring, they're for caring in a loving way all beings and being with their suffering, not wallowing in it, not avoiding it, not grabbing it, not pushing it away. And even if you can't see the suffering, you still can observe with eyes of compassion, and everybody is doing that already. And some of us, like me, can do it more consistently, more consistently, day and night, moment after moment, remember eyes of compassion, and thereby creating a blessing in this world. And now this world's gone, and now we have a new one. And create a field of blessing in this world of suffering.

[26:55]

And now in this world of suffering. So the Kahn's Aeon is emphasizing whatever we're doing, we can observe what we're doing, and we can observe the beings who we're doing it with with eyes of compassion. Somebody told me recently that they're really agonizing over the horrors of this world, like the Middle East. Israel, Syria, Jordan, Sudan, the Ukraine, American politics.

[28:01]

She didn't mention that. She was more emphasizing the suffering of the Middle East. that she was agonizing with that, and also she was, that horror, but also she was experiencing a horror. She was in a horrible state. And I don't know how this happened, but maybe she asked me to make a suggestion, and I think guess what I suggested? I suggested that the great pain she was feeling about the suffering of the Middle East was calling for compassion. These inner demons, these inner horrible demons of suffering were calling for compassion. And all the suffering beings in the Middle East are also calling for compassion.

[29:04]

I suggested that to her, which might not surprise you. And she kind of, I guess she kind of listened to me and thought I was okay, but then she said, but if I'm compassionate towards these suffering beings, I think she was sort of gesturing outward, if you're compassionate to other people who are suffering, that they might take advantage of you. She said, I would say to you that also your inner beings, your inner suffering, your inner suffering beings, your inner fear and anger and resentment and jealousy and envy and such, those also are calling for compassion. And once again, if the compassion comes to your inner demons, they might respond by trying to take advantage of the compassion.

[30:13]

And also if you're compassionate to other beings who seem to be out there, they might try to take advantage of you. And I said to her, right, they might. They might. It isn't that you're compassionate to suffering beings and then they'll never again try to take advantage of you. Also, if you're not kind to suffering beings, they might take advantage of you. No matter whether you're practicing compassion or not, beings may try to take advantage of you. That's part of the world of suffering. Some people are trying to take advantage of some people, and some people are trying to take advantage of you. This is a situation that's calling for compassion. And the compassion is not going to stop all these people who are trying to take advantage. We're not going to get rid of them.

[31:17]

However, we're going to create a field of blessing which will liberate these people who are trying to take advantage of us and liberate them from us who are trying to take advantage of them. this person didn't say, if I practice compassion with people, they will insult me. She didn't bring that one up, but that can happen too. So if you're kind to people, if you're friendly to people, they might try to take advantage. I could give somebody an apple, they might try to get another apple. Yep. But also, they might insult you for giving them an apple instead of a mango. Who knows? So if you practice compassion, You might get insulted. People might try to take advantage of you. Yes. But if you don't, it'll be the same. And no matter what, they're all asking for compassion.

[32:24]

And if you practice it, it creates a field of blessing. And this blessing is inconceivable. This field of blessing is inconceivable, ungraspable, And it's Buddha's field of blessing. And this field of blessing is impartial. It's impartial. You might not be surprised to hear that Buddha is impartial. Buddha is impartial to the different suffering beings. But the field of blessing is also impartial. But even though it's impartial, it's not something that is different. It's the same for everybody. It's impartial and it's different. So Manjushri's questions are kind of related to that. But once again, I think some people think, oh, compassion is good, so I practice compassion, you know, then people will stop trying to abuse me and take advantage of me and insult me.

[33:30]

Not necessarily. They might. Also, they might stop that if you don't practice compassion. That's not the point of it. The point of it is to liberate these beings with this field of blessing, which is full of whatever they need. So I've already talked for a really long time, but I'll just read this question. If I may? Who is asking the question? Manjushri. Then Manjushri asked the awakening being, the Bodhisattva, foremost in vision, Buddhas, as fields of blessing, are one and the same to all. They're impartial to all. How is it that when sentient beings make alms to the Buddhas, make alms to the field of blessing, the resulting rewards are not the same.

[34:33]

Various forms, various families, various faculties, various properties, various masters, various followers, various official positions, various virtuous qualities, various kinds of knowledge, and yet the Buddhas are impartial towards them, not thinking of them as different. And then the Bodhisattva, foremost of vision, foremost in eyes, says, just as the earth is one, yet produces sprouts according to the seeds without partiality towards any of them, so it is with the field of blessing of the Buddhas. Did you get that? Should I say it again? Yeah.

[35:35]

So how come, if the field of blessing is impartial, how come there's all these differences in the way people relate to the field of blessing and the way they are responded to in the field of blessing? So the first answer is, just as the earth is one, yet produces sprouts according to seeds without partiality towards any of them, so is the Buddha's field of blessing. Want one more? The Great Sutra says, and just as water is uniform, yet differs in shape according to the vessel, so it is with Buddha's field of blessing.

[36:46]

It differs only due to beings' minds. The field of blessing is one, it's not different, but different beings' minds make it shaped differently. And because it's ungraspable and inconceivable, it can be adapted to the shape of each person's mind to release them from suffering. Now, this verbal offering has been going on for a while, so I think maybe for now I'll be quiet and see what the Great Assembly has to say. Yes? A vast field of savagery.

[37:52]

So there's fields of savagery. Yes? Yes. Yes. So, can I summarize? In this world of suffering, is it naive to imagine and to actually try out that this listening with compassion can benefit beings who are in this world of suffering? Did that Was that a summary acceptable to you? Right.

[39:00]

You don't see them being helped, okay? You don't see it, right? That's what you're telling us. I see suffering beings who are not being helped. Yeah. Pardon? Who said that? Yeah, it has new marks. So that's part of the problem. You can't see necessarily what it is. However, you can sometimes see, but when you can see, maybe that encourages you. So we have some situation like, for example, my mind can be full of suffering. Right? Is that possible? Really, really bad suffering for me? I can barely go on? Is that possible? Okay. How about your mind? Yeah, it's possible. So your mind is that way, possibly. And then compassion arises in that mind. And that mind becomes peaceful.

[40:04]

it doesn't necessarily, that compassion doesn't get rid of all this suffering. It just realizes a blessing in the middle of it. Could all that suffering go away? Yes, it will go away in the next moment, but more will come. Maybe even worse suffering will come. The proposal is the coexistence of great suffering and great peace. And that proposal is that that's already the case. We have this book which is full of great beings of great peace, and they're living in the world of suffering. And because their field of blessing doesn't have marks, that blessing can be for each person. It's not a fixed blessing. It's a particular blessing that will help this mind and this body be at peace with this suffering of this mind and body. So it's a blessing adapted to the minds of beings.

[41:13]

It's really just one blessing and one mind but it looks all these different ways, all these different kinds of suffering. And so the blessing will look different because it will be in a different field of misery. And the blessing, it can try it out, whether that compassion in the midst of suffering realizes the truth that there's already peace there. So I guess the question is, do you want to try in the middle of suffering, your own and what you see around you, do you want to try practicing compassion and see if you can verify peace and ease and joy of practicing compassion in these horrible fields of suffering? And be open

[42:17]

to the thought that this might be naive. But the thought that it might be naive is also calling for compassion. So I don't want to push that thought that this might be naive away. That's just another being to respect and be gentle with and to embrace with great compassion. And set that being free. Not get rid of it, but set it free. Bring peace to the thought, is compassion naive enough? then perfectly good sentient being there. Let's set it free with compassion. Yes and yes. Yes and yes. Yes. Naive way? What a coincidence. I'm accepting everything that's being proposed here, and I would wish for those people over there to somehow benefit from me wishing that.

[43:37]

And I guess that's, let's say, just prayer work. You wish for that. And I think that the chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra is for people who share that wish. So the field of blessing is immeasurable. It's immeasurably small, like it can fit into the tiniest aspect of your body-mind experience. There's no end to the blessing. It reaches everywhere. That's what the proposal is. There's no end to where it reaches. This is Buddhist compassion. It is infinite. It is immeasurable. It can be immeasurably large and immeasurably tiny. Yes. You might not know that, but also you might not know what it looks like even when it's right here.

[44:38]

Because it has no marks, it can adapt to the needs of beings. If compassion looks like this, then some people, you know, it's not going to be appropriate because they're shaped differently. Thank you. And Arye? There's a lot of things that have been said in that. I just want to thank you for sharing this. I think this is just so incredible. He just said, so incredible. That means unbelievable. That's the root of it. So now we have the word incredible, which means really great, but it actually is saying unbelievable. Yeah, it's credible and wonderful, and so you call it incredible. Yeah. If somebody came to you and they were concerned that if they were compassionate to someone that they experienced as doing wicked things, there was a risk that they would be taken advantage of.

[46:01]

And although indeed it does seem to me that there may be an incredible number of people that will continue to take advantage of said person, it seems to me that they may not actually be able to be taken advantage of if this act... That's right. Compassion cannot be taken advantage of, but the people might try. They can try. Before you're compassionate with people, they can try to take advantage of you. While you're being compassionate, they can try to take advantage of you and of your compassion. And after you're compassionate, they can try. So they can try, but they won't be able to take advantage of the compassion. They can only take They can only take advantage of your greed and your hatred and your delusion. That's how we're vulnerable, by our delusion. People can take advantage of our delusion, but they can't take advantage of our compassion.

[47:02]

Like that story in Les Miserables about the This wonderful character who escaped from prison and he's trying to find a place to stay and he goes to a church and the priest at the church puts him up and I think gives him some food. The priest is being compassionate to him and then he tries to take advantage of the priest by stealing silver altar equipment. He tries to take advantage of the priest's compassion, but he cannot. So he takes them and gets caught, and the police bring him back, and they say, we caught this guy with your altar equipment. He stole it from you. The priest said, he did not steal it. I gave it to him. He tried to take advantage. The priest let him into the house. He's going to take advantage and steal that stuff? He's going to take advantage of this compassion. But he did not succeed in taking advantage of the compassion. He just made it grow.

[48:05]

He gave a chance for it to grow. And that woke him up. That woke him up. When we are compassionate, or when there's compassion and people try to take advantage of it, it wakes people up that they see they can't. They cannot. Then they wake up. Compassion does not get taken advantage of, but greed, hate, and delusion do. They do and they try to. You all know that, right? Could I come back to you in one second? There was somebody else. Who was it? Dennis? I'll come back to you after Dennis. And Tony, Anthony. Yes. Yes. I'm so grateful that you reminded me that I get a chance to see, to feel the blessing arising all the time.

[49:13]

Even when I'm sometimes not watching, sometimes I am watching. And I have been grateful that I can see the field of blessing will rise in San Quentin. What I have seen inmates who have been there for many years, pardon, some people call this work as pardon criminal stuff, but be unrepentant and then they get a chance to take care of other inmates who are aging, need help, going to the bathroom, walking around. And as I've watched this, I've seen these very same hardened,

[50:16]

feel suddenly for the first time they told me feel this great love for these other people and feel then very sorry for the first time for what they did and that kind of suffering that they feel and then they share that with me lots of years thank you Yeah. That's a good example. Thank you. And are you? Thinking about the alternative here as well, right? Supposing we don't look through eyes of compassion. I have family actually in the Middle East, and I see something terrible happen. What so often happens is somebody gets wounded, somebody takes their Uzi out, and goes and tries to avenge what they experienced as this thing.

[51:21]

That, I don't believe, is the example of observing the eyes of compassion. I contrast observing the eyes of compassion to tend to the moon, to tend to the morning, to tend to the summer, to tend to say back and forth as we go along. Hundreds and hundreds of years missing. And to me that's an example of not a mark. Whereas picking up the Uzi, or whatever plan we may have, whatever ideas we may have, that we can grasp into, that we must do, those who have such a high risk of creating more suffering than possible. Thank you. Thank you. Anthony. I think I heard you say that you spend more time in the practice of having eyes of compassion. Did I hear that right? I don't remember saying that.

[52:23]

I do remember saying I definitely wish to, but I sometimes forget. But I do feel maybe I spend more time now than I did a long time ago, because I do spend quite a bit of time observing the world of suffering with eyes of compassion. or devoting myself to that practice is not so much that I do it, but I remember it. Like I said, moment after moment, I remember it. Moment by moment I say, eyes of compassion. And I sometimes forget. Can you share with us what happens for you in that moment where you notice that you have eyes of compassion? I mean, I think this is very important. it's not so much that I have eyes of compassion, but when I am wholeheartedly devoted to remembering these eyes of compassion, at the moment I remember, which means I remember Avalokiteshvara.

[53:34]

When I do, I never regret it. And it encourages me to fearlessly attend to every being, impartially, It is peace for me and you. It is freedom. To be able to remember that presence, remember those eyes, no matter what, rather than remember it when things are this way, but not be able to remember it that way. So the more I remember this possibility, the more it seems like the possibility is freely available. The more confidence that it's always available. The more confidence that it's always here.

[54:35]

And that faith really clears up almost all problems for me and you. Is that enough for this morning? Yes? I don't know if I can put this together, but I want to try. She wants to try to put something together. OK. We're going to observe this person. So these are the two things that I'm trying to put together. I remember hearing that everything is working toward awakening. You've heard that? I agree.

[55:38]

Everything's working towards enlightenment. Actually, everything's doing the work of enlightenment. And then, as I was just letting that I thought about the Buddha, where the Buddha woke and he said, now I see that all beings are liberated. Well, now I see that all beings together with me realize the way. Realize the way. So, if everything is moving toward awakening, then all of this the suffering, the blessing, all of that is like some people that did not invite themselves to offer what it's like if we're in delusion that creates suffering when there's a feeling of blessing.

[56:42]

It's like if I give this, they didn't do it as an offering, then we can still keep seeing the blessing as a way of continually Both sides are continuing toward awakening. What are the two sides? Well, in one way, you can't really see. You don't really know peace unless you see something that's not peace. Maybe so, yeah. So you can't know blessing or non-suffering unless you actually see or feel suffering. So in some ways, by all of these wars and things, it's a way of waking us up to what it is to be deluded by the pain of that. It's a way of liberating, seeing what a liberation is. And that I have eight agents, and you've got the word agency. I've got the obedience over here. It's an agency able to lead. It's the way we're created for what we can do.

[57:46]

all the beings who are performing the work of Buddha, they are also calling for compassion. So in order to realize that they're doing the work of Buddha, we need to attend to their call and also realizing that they are attending to our call. So the Buddha way is already all-pervading, but it includes that we are calling and we are being called. And when we wholeheartedly participate in this call and response, we will realize that this Buddha way is all-pervading. And you said, I have agency. The agency that I have is greed, hate, and delusion. That's my agency.

[59:09]

But this Buddha work is not mine. It's something I'm doing with everybody. It's not mine. It's an agency which is not grasping anything. It's an agency which is observing. It's an observing agency. It's not acting upon all beings. It's observing them. It's not pushing them around. And that's what's actually already going on. Yeah, that's a particular human agency. But in that agency, not everybody's doing that agency. Yeah, not everybody's doing that.

[60:11]

Some people are doing it, some people are not. People who are tending to the wounded... need blessings so that they can attend to the wounded better. Well, some of the people that are being attended might not think it's a blessing. They might not like the way they're being attended to. They might think you're being unskillful. But the point is that what we're doing is individual. This field of blessing that's created by compassion is universal. And we individuals have the opportunity to remember this compassion, which is the same. But it can change depending on whether you're attending to the wounded or hurting somebody. This compassion and this blessing goes to the people who are wounding and the wounded and the medical people who are fixing the wound.

[61:16]

It applies to all of them. And so this person looks like they're harming, this person looks like they're harmed, this person looks like they're healing. All those people are the different shapes of the blessing. That blessing will awaken them and free them from any limited idea they have about what is blessing. about, I'm the wounded, I'm the wounder, I'm the harmer, I'm the healer. All those different positions could be blessings, but they aren't Buddha's field of blessing. They're different blessings. They're different blessings. Buddha's field of blessing is one. It's the same. And that makes it possible for us to liberate all the different types of suffering and all the different types of attempt to help people Yes. Yes, Charlie. I think you just said something that is the best answer I've heard today.

[62:25]

Like the multi-week discussion that we had more than 15 years ago about whether or not free will exists. And at the time, as I recall, you were very insistent that it does not exist. It's not free. It's all on your head. And I just meant that, well, yes, we have some agency. And what I just heard you say was that the agency we have is prepaid. Yeah. And we do have, yes, you have that, and we have that, and the way we have that, and the consequences of having that are prepaid. Yeah, and they're not real, but they hurt. Those agencies hurt. But they're not actually real, and so we can be free of them. Well, they're conventionally real. But we can be free of these things.

[63:28]

But you can't be free of reality. Yes, it is, right. It's a conventional, yeah. Yes, it is. Yes, they're real in these words. So the agency we have is just words. That's the only agency we have. It's just words. It's ungraspable, really. But if we grasp those words, that's suffering. That's dependent co-arising. You're welcome. Thank you. I think maybe that's enough and I want to thank you very much for listening to the discussion of what? Of Buddha's field of blessing as a meditation for us. From the great Avatamsaka Sutra and also from the great Lotus Sutra and also from the great assembly.

[64:36]

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