I don't know about you, but I meet a lot of people who are sick, who have illness. I have the opportunity or the gift of being not too busy to talk to sick people. I'm kind of supported to be available to talk to sick people, to people with illness. Knowing this, sick people come and talk to me and tell me about how they're working

[01:22]

One of the last times I was here, I sang the song with the children, that song, if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands, and then after they left, I sang a different song with the adults, I sang, if you're living and you know it, clap your hands, and then we sang, if you're dying and you know it, clap your hands, if you're sick and you know it, clap your hands, if you're sick and you know it and you really want to show it. So, I don't actually feel myself too sick today, but I know a lot of people who are

[03:10]

sick and who are ill, not exactly sick like a cold, but sick like having one of my close friends broke her neck three days ago and it's not clear whether her sensation in her arms and legs will come back, so it's kind of an illness too. And another friend told me that she's been sick for a long time and actually now she's feeling, in a sense, less pain and a little bit more energy than she has like a few months ago, but still when she considers most of her life, she has much more pain and much

[04:16]

less energy than she used to have. And so she said to me, maybe it would be good if I don't expect to, she might have said, feel better, or anyway, not to expect that I'll be like I used to be. And I thought, yeah, that's good, good not to expect to be healthy. It's good to give up expecting to get healthier, to be like we used to be. Maybe we will be

[05:19]

healthy, but no, maybe we'll be healthy and then hopefully when we're healthy, we'll accept that and say thank you very much. And I would say, I hope that if you're healthy that you accept it and that you let go of it, give it away. And if some more health comes, I hope you accept it and give it away. But if illness comes, I hope you accept it and give it away, too. I don't want illness to come to me or to you, but I do want us to accept it and give it away. I do want health and happiness to come to you, but I also hope that you accept it and give it away.

[06:28]

So when he said this about giving up expectation of feeling better, I said good, and I said also, when illness comes, when pain comes, in addition to not expecting it to go away or to get better, I would encourage myself and others to be generous with the illness. Be gracious with the illness. Practice giving in generosity with the illness that comes to you. Of course, it's hard to accept suffering, especially when it is a new form of suffering or an increase of a familiar suffering.

[07:43]

It's hard to accept it and be gracious with it, to actually give the suffering to the suffering, to meet suffering with generosity by giving the suffering to the suffering. It's hard to learn this, but that's what I recommend to people who are telling me that they're sick, if they seem to be open to that encouragement. And I try to encourage myself to practice the same way with my injuries and wounds and illnesses. I would be comfortable if I could use the word Bodhisattva here, and how many people do not know, are not familiar with the word Bodhisattva? Would you raise your hand?

[08:58]

So, Bodhisattva means, originally it meant that the Buddha, all the lives of the Buddha leading up to the Buddha, before the Buddha was the Buddha. Conventionally we say, when the Buddha was a young man living in India, the Shakyamuni Buddha, when he was a young man, before he opened up to suffering of the world and set off on the path of enlightenment, and also after he set off on the path, he called himself the Bodhisattva, or a Bodhisattva. It's a being who's on the path to enlightenment, who wishes to realize enlightenment in order to help all beings enter the same path of enlightenment to help all beings.

[10:03]

That's a Bodhisattva. So, Bodhisattvas who are working or devoting their life to the welfare of all beings, devoting their lives to free beings who are in the midst of suffering, Bodhisattvas are the beings, or Bodhisattva is the kind of being which is trying to encourage people who are sick and suffering to practice with the sickness and suffering in such a way that they will become free, even while still aging and suffering. And when suffering comes to them because of their mercy, when suffering comes to them because they are open to suffering, when suffering comes to them because they care for suffering beings,

[11:21]

when suffering comes to them because they love suffering beings, when suffering comes to them first due to compassion, they are terrified, or they may be terrified. Because although they welcome and care for all living beings who are suffering, still when it comes to them, when they first meet it, they are terrified to see the beings that they love suffering. They do not yet know how to fully experience the suffering and therefore they are terrified. But as they learn how to fully experience and deeply penetrate the suffering, when the suffering comes, when the suffering comes to them because they welcome suffering beings, because they say,

[12:25]

please come, suffering beings, I am here to help you learn how to deal with suffering, then when the suffering beings come, they are delighted to see the suffering beings. They are not terrified anymore. And the suffering being could be in the form of another human being or another animal or an environment, but it also can be in terms of your own suffering, suffering that arises sort of in yourself, that is welcomed, but still when it first comes, it is terrifying. But then after you learn how to fully experience it, it is a delight. So I can say that given that kind of situation, as you get into opening to the suffering, opening to the suffering, and then feeling suffering when it comes.

[13:35]

But the suffering you are feeling is the suffering that is born of your love for the suffering being. The suffering that comes to us because we love beings surpasses all other kinds of happiness. Suffering born of love for suffering beings surpasses all other kinds of happiness. Once again, suffering comes to the compassionate one, suffering comes to compassion,

[14:39]

You don't have to think of yourself as a compassionate one, but sometimes there is compassion in you. And sometimes suffering comes to that compassion. That compassion in you is like a being living in your human being. Is it the Declaration of Independence that says all men are created equal, or is that the U.S. Constitution? The Declaration of Independence, unfortunately named. I wish it was named the Declaration of Interdependence, but the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. One understanding that I have of that statement is all beings are created equal in the sense that they all have the capacity for compassion.

[15:54]

Not equal capacity, because the capacity can be developed more or less infinitely. But all men and women, all human beings have the capacity for compassion, for loving other beings who are suffering. When this compassion is alive or turned on in you or me, when suffering beings come at first, even though we feel compassion for them and welcome them, when they come in our welcoming, open state, we'll at the beginning be terrified. But after we get used to it, we won't be terrified anymore, we will delight. And when beings bring their suffering, we will experience a happiness of feeling their suffering.

[16:56]

And we will feel a suffering because of their suffering, but because they are suffering and we love them, we will feel a pain, a suffering ourself. And that is the supreme, wonderful happiness. The most marvelous happiness, the happiness which comes from love for all beings. Okay, so now, suffering is coming to the compassionate one, they've gotten over their terror somewhat,

[18:03]

they're feeling suffering with the other person, other beings. And they're feeling happy, they're feeling happy at the pain that they feel because they love the being. So, again, at the beginning I said, you've got some illness, okay? Give up expecting it to go away, accept it, welcome it, welcome it. Don't want it to come, but when it comes, welcome it. And feel the joy in welcoming it because you love the suffering being. And then, the compassion not only welcomes and feels joy in caring for this being,

[19:08]

but the compassion now encourages and instructs its first child, so to speak, its first offspring, its first student, which is also in the heart of compassion, the heart of compassion has offspring. And the first offspring is giving, is the practice of giving. And again, this generosity, which is driven by compassion, provides the Bodhisattva. With a happiness, which, again, surpasses all happinesses of psychological and physical happiness.

[20:22]

It's a spiritual happiness. It doesn't put down any other kinds of happiness, it's just more or less infinitely more wonderful. And, of course, it's not touched at all by the loss of all the other kinds of happiness. And it's not hurt or shocked by the presence of other kinds of happiness either. It isn't afraid that the current happinesses will be taken away, which they will. So, compassion has this offspring,

[21:30]

the offspring of giving, and giving has the offspring or fruit of wealth or fortune. Compassion leads to giving, the first practice of compassion, the first implementation of compassion, being generous and giving. And the result of giving is wealth, resources. And, coming with these three, compassion, giving, generosity, and wealth, coming with those three is three kinds of happiness. One is the happiness of compassion due to love. And next comes the happiness from giving.

[22:37]

And next comes the happiness of being able to assist people with the wealth that comes from giving. Compassion develops and grows through its own practice. Generosity grows or is motivated by compassion. And wealth grows by continual practice of giving. Wow, it's already time to stop. Compassion grows through giving, and giving grows through giving, and wealth grows through giving.

[24:14]

So, in this realm of illness, if we are able to enter it, if we wish to enter it in order to benefit beings who are ill, and then once we enter, we stand or sit upright, or walk upright, or swim upright in this field of suffering, and practice giving, a great joy arises through the practice of giving, of compassionate giving in the realm of suffering. And this joy grows and grows in the field of suffering.

[25:23]

So we say like a lotus grows in muddy water. The lotus, if it gets connected from the muddy water, it will wilt and fall into the muddy water. If it gets disconnected from the muddy water, if it loses its full engagement with the muddy water, the lotus will die. But if it stays connected and is fully rooted and fully embraces the muddy water, the lotus lives. And it only comes to an end of its living through reproducing and making more lotuses. It needs to stop being a flower in order to make the next generation. It doesn't really die unless there's no muddy water. Or unless lotuses become squeamish about muddy water.

[26:31]

But it's not really the lotuses that become squeamish about the muddy water, because if they're alive, they're fully engaged with the muddy water. Totally rooted and nourished by what? By suffering beings. The spiritual lotus is fed by suffering beings. It welcomes them into its roots and up through its stem and into its leaves and bud and flower. And so finally the lotus blossoms. This pure flower blossoms, fed by suffering. A flower which seems to be free of the mud. The celebration, not so much of mud, but sort of a mud. I was in a pub one time in England, and there was kind of a smorgasbord there.

[27:39]

And this man was saying, look down at the smorgasbord, looking at the vegetables. And he said, these beautiful things come out of the dirt. And he said to the guy next to him, he said, when I saw that, the scales dropped away from my eyes and I became a vegetarian. So beautiful, these beautiful plants offered to nourish us coming from the dirt. The lotus. The lotus has gotten over its fear of the mud. A while ago. And now it's blooming and blossoming a beautiful flower. And now the flower of the lotus, even the flower of the lotus, offers protection and nourishment to living beings. Some animals at night go and sit on the lotus flower.

[28:43]

Because the lotus flower closes at night and stays warm for these beings that live there during the night. And then they open in the morning to the light and the beings go out on their daily rounds. So even the flower is supporting beings. The flower is supported by beings. The roots are supported by beings. And the flower grows through full engagement with the beings. But then the flower drops its petals and becomes a fruit. And the fruit, when it gets really heavy, droops over into the water and swells in the dirty water. And pressure builds up until the fruit explodes out of the water, back into the sky and throws its seeds all over the pond, which go down again into the mud. And those little seeds have a gravitational attraction to the mud

[29:48]

and they get situated and then they germinate and they engage with the mud and more lotuses come. So the lotus doesn't really die, it just gives itself away to make more lotuses. But if the lotus loses touch with the mud, then it dies. Compassion is partly trying to encourage us to give up our craziness and our terror of suffering. We've got the suffering, we've got the mud, now we just need some compassion encouragement, some encouragement from compassion and for compassion, to relax and just relax and be present. And when the suffering comes, just let the seeds drop down in there,

[30:51]

into it. And feel the encouragement to be generous towards this process. And feel, perhaps, the actual intention to dive into this world of suffering, because of the great happiness of caring for people who are suffering and showing them how to find a happiness of caring for beings who are suffering. And thereby, find joy in the world as it happens to be right now.

[31:52]

And now. And now. And now. Accepting this world and growing lotuses in it, to help others accept the world and grow lotuses. If the world ever runs out of mud, we'll deal with that. In the meantime, while there's still suffering, on such a grand, more or less infinite scale, shall we grow lotuses? And show others how to grow lotuses? How to patiently, generously, graciously encourage ourselves to be gracious with all this suffering. All men and women are created with this capacity.

[32:56]

We have this potential. So I have the thought that, in some ways, what I've been saying is kind of simple, but maybe hard to believe. Hard to believe that the greatest happiness is the happiness of the suffering that comes from love. And that that happiness gets more and more great

[34:02]

the more we practice generosity and giving in this field of suffering. Generosity with other beings suffering. Teaching them how to be generous with their suffering. And generous with our suffering, which is a joy, if it's a suffering from mercy. And then generously giving away all of our happiness that comes from compassion. Round and round, until all beings are lotuses. I wanted to sing a song which goes something like, I'm gonna love you like nobody's love you, come rain or come shine. Happy together, unhappy together, and won't it be fine.

[35:09]

We're in or we're out of the money. Something like that. I don't know the song. I looked for it, I have it some place, but I couldn't find it. Happy together, unhappy together, and won't it be fine. But I do have the words for another song. Which is kind of appropriate because today is the 15th of July. And on the 10th I was 64, so I have that song. Some of you know this, right? You can sing it too. It has some relevance, perhaps, you will find.

[36:11]

Most songs do. I would like all beings to be able to sing and dance in the middle of suffering. Everybody, together, sing and dance. If you're suffering and you know it, clap your hands. If you're suffering and you know it, clap your hands. If you're suffering and you know it and you really want to show it. If you're suffering and you know it, clap your hands. Like that. Happy together, unhappy together. So this one goes... When I sing it, it goes like this. When I get old and lose my hair, many years from now. Will you still be sending me a valentine? Birthday greetings, bottle of wine. If I've been out a quarter of three, will you lock the door?

[37:13]

Will you still feed me? Will you still need me? When I'm sixty-four, you'll be older too. Ah, if you would say the word, I could stay with you. I could be handy, bending a fuse. When your lights have gone, you could knit a sweater by the fireside. Sunday mornings, go for a ride to Green Gulch. Doing the garden, digging the weeds. Who could ask for more? Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm sixty-four, every summer we could rent a cottage by the Isle of Wight.

[38:24]

If it's not too dear, we shall scrimp and save. Ah, the grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck and Dave. Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view. Indicate precisely what you mean to say. You're sincerely wasting away. Wasting away. Somebody said to me the other day, you're getting so skinny. What's going on? You're sincerely wasting away. Give me your answer, fill it in a form. Mine forevermore. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm sixty-four.

[39:26]

Boom, boom. Isn't that something? At Green Gulch I get applause for that.

[39:37]

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