Yesterday I brought up part of the universal encouragements for the ceremony of Zazen. And this morning, did you chant it? And there's a part of it where it says, suppose you are confident in your understanding, rich in awakening, satori. suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in awakening.

[01:09]

Another translation is, suppose you may boast of comprehension and wallow in awakening, in understanding, in satori. Suppose that. Now when you say wala, people say, maybe this is not so good. Anyway, wala also means rich, that you're rich. Suppose you're rich. You have abundant awakening. Having gotten a glimpse of insight And though you find the way and understand the mind, inspired with great determination to soar the skies, although you may roam freely in the bounds of initial entry, you are still somewhat lacking in the vital road of emancipation.

[02:30]

And then the next part says, consider the Buddha. Although the Buddha was wise at birth, still the Buddha practiced for six years. And Bodhidharma, although he had received the Buddha Mind Seal, he sat for nine years. So one way to understand this next paragraph is that when one, when you and I are proud with understanding and rich in awakening, rich in satori, we might think, I don't have to sit anymore. I don't have to do that ceremony anymore of sitting with those people who are not so rich as me. But following this possibility of satori is the historical reference to the Buddha.

[03:50]

In past lives, one might say Buddha had many enlightenments before finally taking the seat of the Buddha. But still the Buddha practiced. in the final life. And Bodhidharma was already awake when he came to China, but he kept practicing. And there was a historical situation around Dogen Zenji which was people were attaining enlightenment and then thinking that they didn't have to practice the way anymore. They could just enjoy their own wealth. And then, although, yeah, and even if you are rich, Dogen Zenji still has some instructions for you, which is basically, the next section is about, therefore, put aside intellectual practice of investigating words and phrases.

[04:52]

Put aside discursive thought for the time being. put aside discursive thought in your karmic consciousness, let it go. Let it go, let it go, calm down, and then contemplate. Turn the light around and shine it back. Turn the light of karmic consciousness back and shine it on karmic consciousness. And then body and mind drop away. And I would say That's referring to not a personal awakening. It's referring to dropping away body and mind and entering the Buddha mind, which is not a personal awakening. And it includes all personal awakenings.

[05:54]

That may sound familiar to you. The Buddha mind includes all personal awakenings. It includes the enlightenment of all beings. It also includes the delusion of all beings. Buddha mind is not a personal enlightenment. It includes innumerable satori's and is free of all of them. And so there is an understanding which I kind of am in alignment with that satori, which is often translated as discernment or understanding, it constitutes freedom from the delusions of karmic consciousness. The realization true realization of the Buddha is freedom from personal understanding.

[07:10]

So the paragraph about, suppose you have pride of understanding, I think that's about personal understanding. And it's an entry point, it's a way to enter. And you enter by continuing to practice. The realization is including all satori's and clinging to none of them, wallowing in none of them, no matter how rich they are, and also including all delusion and not wallowing in delusion, taking care of all delusion. The realization practices compassion towards all varieties of delusion and awakening. and practicing compassion towards awakening is not to cling to it or be stuck in it. And the same with practicing compassion with delusion is not to cling to it or be stuck in it.

[08:15]

But be devoted to it, be generous with it, be careful and gentle with it, respect it, be patient with it. That's what realization does with delusion. And it does the same with awakening. So karmic consciousness and understanding it and becoming free of it. We could say karmic consciousness is like the crescent moon. and understandings like the full moon. But the realization is the full moon seen through ivy. It's the full moon not separate from karmic consciousness.

[09:19]

In many people's experience, we are studying the karmic consciousness, shining the light on karmic consciousness, and then suddenly we realize the full moon of what karmic consciousness is, and we're free of it. And at that time we don't see karmic consciousness anymore. When we are studying karmic consciousness but not completely wholeheartedly, it still looks like this is karmic consciousness and there may be some understanding or some enlightenment separate from it. There's two of them. When you fully study karmic consciousness, there's no enlightenment. You don't see any enlightenment at all. not the least bit out of the corner of your eye.

[10:25]

You're not looking around for it. You're completely engaged in karmic consciousness. And it's just the crescent moon, or it's just the ivy. That's it. And that opens the door to just see. Awakening. and there's no karmic consciousness. The more advanced and complete and mature is the next step is to leap beyond just awakening where there's no karmic consciousness and open to the total interfusion of delusion and awakening.

[11:28]

And this total interfusion is present right now with whatever enlightenments and delusions and practices there are in the world. And it is appropriate to this realization to practice with whatever enlightenment and whatever delusion we have. Again, by practicing wholeheartedly with whatever delusions we have, body and mind drop away, and we realize our original face. Again, as Dogen Zenji says, the Buddha way is basically leaping. It's leaping. It's leaping in karmic consciousness and then leaping in enlightenment and leaping in karmic consciousness and leaping in both at the same time.

[12:55]

So it is possible for us to sit here and let go of our discursive thought and calm down. And it's possible to practice that just like cleaning the zendo or sweeping the paths. You do it because Because all those discursive thoughts are calling for compassion. You're not giving them compassion, which is to let them go. You're not letting them go, which is compassion, to get something. You're letting them go because they want to be free. You're letting them go because they want you to let go of them. They want you to calm down. And they want you then to turn the light around and shine it on them so that you and they can be free together.

[14:24]

In this way, we allow the wisdom light to shine. We don't make it. We don't break it. But we allow it by allowing our discursive thought to go, allowing it to drop away. And it's a big job. I mean, it's a basically, potentially nonstop occupation of letting go of all that's going on in karmic consciousness. Here it comes. Compassion, let it go. Calming down, compassion, let it go. The light turns around, compassion and let it go. And then the lights turn around, compassion and let it go. This is a practice which is realization.

[15:33]

It's not a practice to get something. What we want to get, the freedom of all beings, peace in the world, is not other than this. But we have a mind which thinks it is, sometimes, and we treat the mind which thinks that where we want to go and what we want to be is something other than this. karmic consciousness thinks that complete, perfect and light can, doesn't always think that, but it can think, it can make discriminations between this and the best situation. Again, that discrimination is asking for compassion and it's asking to be released.

[16:35]

Releasing it is the practice which allows the realization that where we want to be and where we are are not two things. And the practice is not different from where we want to be. And once again, I imagine that many people may not think that realization, no, many people would think that realization is leaping beyond all varieties of delusions.

[17:38]

I agree with that. But not so many people might think that or understand that realization is leaping beyond all forms of enlightenment. Low, medium, and highest forms of enlightenment are leaped beyond in the realization of the Buddhas. The Buddhas leap beyond Buddha. And sometimes they wind up right in the middle of profound delusion. They aren't necessarily trying to land in profound delusion or not so profound delusion. They just leap and they wind up someplace and there they practice realization. They don't abide anywhere and they embrace everywhere I rest my case.

[18:49]

My case is rested, or my case is resting. It's rested, it's resting, and I rest it. But that doesn't mean that the music won't start again if you want it to. Yes? Just adjusting your glasses. Yes? Yesterday you talked about Calgary. Yesterday you talked about the Self with a little s and a capital S. Yeah. Or you said you were going to talk about it. I did. And I'm wondering if you also mentioned that, which I guess are delusions of faith, and there is the Jew who's looking at that.

[20:02]

That was something you said just now. And I'm wondering if the delusions are... the self, the small s, whatever is looking at the capital S? Well, just for now I would say the deluded self is the normal self in karmic consciousness which seems to be, what, like directing the activities of consciousness, owning various things in the consciousness, not owning others, In other words, it's the afflicted sense of self. It's also a self which might appear to be existing independent of everything else. That's like a small self. The big self is maybe that it's the self that's both the self and the not. It's the way the self is the self and not the self and the self and not the self. That's kind of the big self or the capital capital self.

[21:07]

It's the, you could say, it's realization. Or you could say, it's looking at itself in the form of what it isn't. It's like, I look at myself in the form of you. That's how I look at myself. The capital self would be the precious mirror samadhi. or the merging of difference and unity. It's not just unity. It's unity seeing itself as difference. That would be like the capital S Self. We can go on, but how's that? Sounds good. I'm also wondering the low, medium, and high level of enlightenment. Yeah? What's that about? to notice that beings are suffering and wanting to

[22:22]

free them from it, but still thinking that they're not you. That's a kind of enlightenment, but it's still kind of like suffering from the belief that those who the self wants to help are separate. But it's a kind of enlightenment. And then you could wake up from that delusion that they're separate, but still kind of holding on to that. That would be a higher enlightenment, but still having the problem of being kind of stuck in it. And then a higher one would be like to get over that one. And then a higher one would be like to totally embrace all beings and being in perfect accord with them. That would be a higher one. And yeah, and we can keep going. Is that enough for now? And you know, you can have like three, high, medium, and low.

[23:27]

You can have ten levels. A lot of schools stop at ten. Some have twelve levels of enlightenment. But three is okay, or just one is fine too. One level of enlightenment. Because they really do include each other. All the enlightenments that there are are actually imperceptibly in accord with each other. Yes. Do you need to see the full moon in order to what? I think so. but I'm not sure. It may be possible to skip seeing the full moon and go right directly to the most advanced stage.

[24:33]

Maybe we can just skip over that, rather the medium advance and just go right to the advanced since it's already here. But anyway, a lot of stories are people see the full moon and then they get over it, or And then some stories are they see the full moon and they hang out there for kind of a long time and it's a pretty sad situation. In a way, sometimes sadder than the people who never saw it. People who see the full moon but don't have a thanga, There's some very sad stories about that, especially as it gets transmitted to the West. The full moon gets transmitted. Some people see it, and they have no sangha to help them deal with it, and they just get really stuck in it. And if you're just stuck in delusion, a lot of people can help you. Yes?

[25:38]

Yes? Mm-hmm. Could you talk to me up close here? Or use a microphone? I recently read that someone who is from the Khandapa school, he said that most people, we could only read the What has now is in another way of saying it is like form. Most of us, our wisdom of faculty could only understand we could understand the form, but we can't really reach the emptiness, which is, for us, is good enough.

[26:49]

This comes to another thing I read. You know, John Halifax, from Upaya, and he, she, and one of her Dharma teachers, cast Hanasaki and they recently retranslated the Heart Sutra and they just eliminated emptiness and used the word boundlessness and I read the whole whole translation the first time and so I don't remember anything right now but that was boundlessness caught my eyes and so I couldn't stop thinking about it so it seems like they give a new meaning to the emptiness So, and I wonder what this bowlessness will create a new ways of thinking about emptiness, or is it just a fancy word?

[27:56]

I think that using a new word could create new ways of meditating on emptiness, yes. Like I know some people who just really don't like the word emptiness. They like interconnectedness though. So they can meditate on interconnectedness and that's a very good meditation too. So yeah, I think that these words are trying to help us see what's beyond words. So if a word helps us pay attention to a word, And maybe we will see what's beyond the word if we really give our practice compassion with that word. The word will take off its mask and show us what's beyond words. And so Zen especially emphasizes the transmission which is beyond words.

[29:02]

And it talks a lot to give people words to help them find what's beyond words. And what's beyond words talks to people so that they can realize what's beyond words. Kaz Tanahashi is talking in a way, he's trying to help people find what's beyond words by using a different word. And then using other words to tell us why he chose the other word. And this kind of meditation might help people find what's beyond the word emptiness, the word boundlessness, the word suffering, the word enlightenment. But we have to practice compassion with words in order to find out what is beyond words. Are you practicing compassion with words?

[30:10]

I'm obsessed with words. Pardon? I'm obsessed with words. You're obsessed with words? OK, thank you. Are you practicing compassion with the obsession? No. Do you wish to practice compassion with the obsession? No. I want to drop it. You want to drop it. Yeah. If you want to drop it, do you think you can drop it without being compassionate to it? I haven't reached the conclusion yet. You haven't reached the conclusion. I think maybe there's one way of doing it. I think there's one way of enjoying it too. So do you know a way I think is the way to do it? What? I don't know. It's a question. Sorry. So if you want to drop obsession, the way I think obsession is dropped is by compassion to obsession. And if you don't want to be compassionate to obsession, the way to drop not wanting to be compassionate is to be compassionate to not wanting to be.

[31:22]

That's what I think. Do you agree? I don't know yet. Not yet. Yeah, so please accept my thanks for listening to me say strange things. Thank you. I'll hold that for you. Did you hear her? She's honestly said what she said. Yes. Yeah. Is that how it goes from one to two to three? No, not necessarily. In my case, I told you, right? I was feeling some dusty, kind of dead space in my heart.

[32:25]

And I was given the phrase, I love you. And I said it. And I felt things come alive, you know? And the dustiness clear away a little bit. But it was still there. And then I got this other... gift, thank you. And that cleared it even more. But it was still not completely clear. And then I got, I'm sorry. And then it cleared the rest of the way. But somebody else could come at it another way. They could feel like they say they're sorry, and they feel a clearing between them in some situation, some person, some event. They might start with, I'm sorry, and that starts to open. Then they might say, thank you, and it opens more. Then they might say, I love you, and that opens more. So I'm not saying it has to be in any particular order.

[33:28]

And there may be other words that might also be given that would even more fully open the relationships. How could you teach? It's okay. It's okay. Just don't put us across. That's all, huh? Right. Wow. This love you part, I heard you say it to us. I didn't believe that one. I believed the thank you. I believed I'm sorry. I'm sorry. If you don't believe that one, then I would say, thank you very much. Do you believe that? Yeah. Yeah. A little more. By the way, you might not have believed that I was saying I love you, but do you believe I love the Buddhas?

[34:30]

I'm a little more confident that you love the Buddhas. Yeah, well, obviously. Yeah, so I was talking to the Buddhas too. And so you were in the neighborhood where I was talking to some people that I love. And you thought, well, I don't think I'm one of them. But you were there. And you could see that I do love somebody. He probably loves Suzuki Roshi, right? All more likely. Than me. What? All more enlightened than you? More likely. More what? Likely. More likely. More likely. Yeah. Not that I, not that I got, I guess I want to feel, I want to feel love, but I guess I got some issues. Thank you for the exchange.

[35:38]

Thank you. I'm sorry, and I won't say any more. Oh, yes? I wanted to ask you a little more about the process of being compassionate to people. Okay. So I see something come up, you know, maybe I'm puffed up, maybe I'm angry, maybe I'm obsessive, you know, whatever it is. Maybe I'm actually, you know, I see the harmfulness of of that delusion. So, and you say practice compassion with it, so, and then let it go.

[36:41]

So, like, I was wondering how that, how to, how to do that. Like, would I say, meanness, I love you? Or... Good, but I recommend starting with, again, welcome. I recommend starting with welcome. Welcome. Walk. Welcome. I recommend starting with that because love is a little bit fraught with attachment, the word. But so I recommend starting with welcome. Welcome your mean, mean thought. Yeah. Welcome your mean, mean thought. Yes. I definitely try to welcome the meanest and the less mean and the medium mean. I really want to welcome the most terrible thoughts I do.

[37:43]

And I never regret welcoming them. And do they talk back? My thoughts talk back? Well, they're already talking. They can talk more. They actually do talk back. They sometimes say thank you. Sometimes they say, you know, get out of here. Yeah, and then I welcome that. It's a conversation. Welcome, stop welcoming me. Do you want me to talk to you? No. I want to welcome that. May I talk to you? No. I want to welcome that. Please let me talk to you. No, I want to welcome that. Yes, that's what I want. And that's where I start. I start with generosity. And as I said before, it may be that this particular difficult guest, I say welcome, I don't really wholeheartedly mean it, and I can tell that I didn't quite mean it.

[38:46]

And if I keep saying it over and over and over, I usually get to the place where I actually mean it, and I feel better and better the more I do actually welcome. I feel more and more joy when the more and more I really do welcome it. And then I move on to other aspects of compassion, ethics, patience, diligence. and concentration. And when all of those are gathered together, it's like, you could say, the drop, the letting go of them, the liberation of them. You could say it's spontaneous, but it's spontaneous because the conditions are already there. You don't have to add anything to the situation. All those things are the same as letting go. So it's like spontaneous combustion. You don't put a match to it. You've got conditions. So when all that compassion is there with a tough customer, the customer is released.

[39:50]

But the compassion doesn't try to eliminate the tough customer. It does not try to eliminate it. It's trying to liberate it and everything that lives with it. I do not regret that practice when I do it, and I consider it a great gift to me and to all of us. Compassion. So this is the first four or five of the Bodhisattva practices. The dropping away happens with the sixth. the first five, get it ready to be released. But it's not going to be released until it gets lots of compassion. It's going to say, I'm going to be here until I get enough compassion. And then when it gets enough, it says, okay, you can let go to me, I'll let go of you. Can I ask a follow-up question about the logistics of that dance?

[40:53]

Uh-huh, yes. So let's say I'm cleaning a zendo or a room and I'm struck with an inner turmoil. Some hindrance shows up, rage or upset or whatever it is. And so I'm going to be compassionate to it. Do I stay in language and literally while I'm cleaning have a conversation which seems like it's at odds with being present with just cleaning? So I don't know, or do I sort of blow from my heart, just compassion, oh honey, you're upset, I see that, and try to do it in a visceral way? Because I don't see how I can stay with cleaning. Could you hold the microphone a little farther from your mouth? I don't see how I can stay with the mundane task while I'm doing this work. It's tricky, I don't get that. So I'm cleaning... I'm cleaning, and I get struck. Or I'm cleaning, and somebody comes in the room. So I'm cleaning, and I'm trying to welcome the cleaning, too.

[41:57]

Trying to be compassionate to the cleaning. And then I get struck. So can I say, welcome, strike, and keep cleaning? Let's see. I might be able to. But I might drop my cleaning equipment. if I welcome this strike. And I would say, maybe that's kind of sad to drop the cleaning. But you won't necessarily stop cleaning. That's one of the nice things about cleaning is that sometimes you can keep doing it even when people start harassing you. or feelings start harassing you while you're cleaning, you might be able to continue it. Whereas if you're in the middle of a sentence and you get struck, it might be hard to finish the sentence. But that's part of the reason we have simple physical acts in Zen temples, because you can continue to do them even while you're being assailed by affliction.

[43:00]

And then you can keep doing them while you're assailed. Yes, you can. You can keep sweeping and keep cleaning when you're assailed. But not only can you continue cleaning, but you can even practice compassion with the assailant and continue cleaning. Your cleaning might change a little bit. Your sweeping strokes might shorten or lengthen. We can accept that. I can accept that. So yeah, I think a lot of things we do here you can continue while you're being strongly afflicted. And you can even continue those acts and be compassionate to the affliction at the same time. But if you have to stop for a minute, it's okay with me. However, somebody might come up to you and assail you and say, why did you stop? But now that you've stopped, you don't have to worry anymore.

[44:06]

You have a lot of energy available to be kind to the person who's asking you why you stopped. And you could say, I'm laughing because I thought of one time I was with my dear little friend named Gabe and he was going into the water of a lake and he started to walk into the seaweed. You know, some people find walking into the water with seaweed getting on your legs kind of creepy. And he said, he stopped and his mother said, what's the matter Gabe? And he said, I'm having problems with the plant life. So if you're on a cleaning crew and you get assailed by affliction and you stop cleaning for a minute and your crew head comes over and says, what's the matter? You say, I'm having trouble with my afflictions.

[45:07]

I'm trying to practice compassion with them, but I'm really having a hard time. Oh, okay. Please resume sweeping when you have a chance. I think even if the cleaning is somewhat, I don't know what, what's the word, slows down because people are trying to learn to practice compassion with what's going on, maybe we can survive that. I think there's quite a few stories in the Zen Center history of people who had a hard time while they were working and practiced compassion towards the hard time and continued to work. We can learn that. Anyway, it's encouraged that you take care of yourself while you're working. Please do.

[46:09]

I don't know who was first, but I'll start. I think you were ahead of Jenny. Marie? Earlier, did you say that when you were talking about shining the light inward, that it was karmic consciousness shining the light on karmic consciousness? Hmm. Yeah, I might have said it. Anyway, the cognitive consciousness has lights. It's got lights in it. It's lit. And that light can shine often towards objects, like mental objects. So now when it's shining on a mental object, just hear the instruction, turn that light around and shine it back on the consciousness which could be understood as something other than the objects.

[47:19]

Not forgetting the objects, but let's just shine the light on the whole situation. Like, what's the whole pattern there? And also, what's the self? And the translation we do is, turn the light around and shine it back to illuminate the self. The original does not say, I don't think anything about the self. But in fact, when you turn the light around and shine it back, or when the light is echo-hensho, when the light is turned around and shined back, it often does shine on the self. And before that, it was like the self was shining the light. So the self wasn't being examined. So usually the self isn't being examined, it's just like assumed to be there, no question about it, and it's in charge, no question about that. It's all about turning the light, which is usually shining from the self, onto the things and onto the operations, but not actually examining them. So it's like turn the light also means question the whole situation. and each part of it.

[48:21]

Usually we're just like, business as usual, shining the light, let's turn that around and study the situation. So this is also called study the self, rather than just let it run rampant, unexamined. Okay, I guess where I get stuck is the idea that the karmic consciousness, which I'm assuming is the deluded, is delusion, examining delusion. Like, how does that work? I think that just the light shining is not really delusion. I think that's just awareness. So the delusion is light. that one element in the pattern is controlling the other elements. And that's one of the patterns too, is that this element is controlling those elements rather than those elements are controlling this element, or rather than we happen to be living together.

[49:27]

So the delusion is we're living together and this one's in charge of that one. And actually, the self is usually the one who's said to be in charge of the other ones. It isn't usually we say that my pain is directing myself, or my pleasure is directing myself. Actually, nothing's directing the other parts. They're just activity. And the activity includes various misunderstanding that somebody's in charge of it. But again, we come by that honestly. Our body and unconscious process put this misconception up in consciousness and turning the light around and shining it back on that delusion. But the whole situation is deluded because it has delusions, but not everything in there is delusion. Some of the stuff is just simply data represented as images. And the self isn't exactly a delusion.

[50:29]

It's the attributing independent existence to it, attributing governing power to it. Those are delusions which are normally pushed into, offered to consciousness. And the consciousness has awareness. And the awareness this light, it's actually the light, or the fire almost, that comes from the interaction of all these things. So we have a body, which is a sensitive, physical, located, living thing, and it interacts with the environment, which is other living beings and non-living beings, But those other living beings, the way they interact with this body is through these organs, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles.

[51:36]

When the body interacts with other bodies, which means other sights, other sounds, other smells, other touches, when that interaction occurs, that interaction is a light. that interaction is an awareness. So awareness is an interaction. And that awareness is the cognitive process. And then the cognitive process produces a special cognitive process where there's a sense of self. So consciousness is basically light and awareness. And that light, once it appears, it can be used in various ways. And it tends to be used in habitual ways that have been highly evolved. And now we're coming to a stage where we can use them in new ways, instead of just using them to supervise and so on and so forth, which is

[52:39]

has high survival value and also doesn't take much energy. Now we're going to try to do something to relieve the situation of stress and delusion. Let's use this light of consciousness in a new way to study the consciousness and to examine our assumptions and misunderstandings and delusions about the self's relationship with everything in consciousness. in other words, study the self, and become free of our delusions about it, and then the whole situation opens up to a reality which evolution has decided to hide from us. Better you don't know about it, because you won't be able to reproduce very well if you do. This is like, I'm having trouble with the plant life. you know, I don't, yes, Andrea.

[53:45]

So, you've been talking about compassion, and I keep trying to Recognize compassion. This morning, during the first sit, my right hip really started hurting, and I started crying, and the question came up, what hurts more, your hip or your heart? And I don't have an answer, but I started crying more. Is that compassion? Crying? The fact that I had that question, what hurts more, my hip or my heart? Is the question compassion? Is the pain? I think that it's coming to you was compassion. But the question was more like, was the gift. So I think the fact that it was given to you and you received it, that relationship is compassion.

[55:01]

But the gift all by itself... A gift all by itself isn't really compassion. But I see that what came to you as a gift. So the giving of it was compassion, but your receiving it was the compassion, and the gift was part of that. But the gift by itself isn't compassion. The question by itself wasn't compassion. No, but it sounds like a gift to me. You didn't... You didn't make that up. I didn't make that up. But you and I and all of us together gave that to you, put that in your consciousness. That was given to you. That sounds like quite a nice gift. But that gift all by itself, that I wouldn't call the gift compassion, I would call the whole process of that that was given to you and you received it. Now what if the compassion was given to you and you didn't receive it? Well, I would say the giving of it really did include your receiving and the gift, but you didn't get it.

[56:07]

You weren't there for it. You weren't conscious of it, but it was still given to you. We have stories about people giving gifts, really important gifts, to people who don't know they got them. And then later they find out. But they actually did receive it, they just weren't conscious. And so we can give things unconsciously to people or we can give things consciously to people that they're unconscious of, and then later they discover. So the giving process is actually there all the time. And in this case, I feel like you noticed the gift. So then you can ask, where's the compassion? And I can say, well, It was the gift. When you received it, you know those parts, that was given to you. Now you know that part. That whole process, I would say, that's compassion in the form of giving. Now if it was a different one, something really painful, we could also find compassion there, too, in the giving, the receiving, and the gift.

[57:15]

And also, if you were patient with it, that would be compassion. And yeah, you didn't mention it, but maybe there was also patience with this gift of this question. Maybe you were there for it, and then you cried more. And maybe you were there with that. So compassion was there in that way, too. As we explore any moment, we will find all the different dimensions of compassion are there. Compassion is with us all the time. But if we don't try to practice it in all these different ways, we might miss it. It's actually there. But you wondered about it, you brought it up, and now we're talking about it, so now we're starting to wake up that compassion was there and always will be. But without these conversations, we have a dangerous opportunity of missing it. There's somebody right next to you that's conveniently located.

[58:20]

I've been thinking about the situation with you and Suzuki Roshi in that room. What do you think of this? That you sitting there, him calling you to that room, him delivering this extraordinary communication, and you getting it and lighting up and him seeing you light up. How about if that's the full moon, the unobstructed moon? And then you falling asleep, could that be the moon through the ivy? Yes. And I wasn't ready for it. I kind of thought, there shouldn't be ivy here. When this gift is being given, it should be like no ivy. I should receive this kindness with no obstructions.

[59:20]

Thank you. I have a question. I know we're not talking about words too much, but I notice you've been using the word careful, and I've been thinking, how would you distinguish careful from mindful? Because you're using careful, and are they exactly the same, a little different, quite different for you? Well, for me, the word careful is very closely related to tender, but a little bit different. Mindful is a little different. In what way is mindful? Well, the Sanskrit original of the word that's often translated as mindful, its primary meaning is remember. or memory. And it has other meanings like being alert, being ardent, or warm.

[60:32]

So your mindful is to remember to pay attention, but it's paying attention, but it's also remembering to pay attention. And then paying attention, like alert means like right now, and ardent means like wholeheartedly. So mindfulness in that big sense includes, I think, what do you call it? It promotes the opportunity for being careful. Because you could be mindful maybe, but still not be careful. You could be like, remember to pay attention, and then be there and be ardent about it, but maybe be rough and disrespectful. So it doesn't mean when you're mindful you can't be disrespectful at the same time. It's just you have a chance of noticing it. I was a little rough there. I was a little, maybe I was a little arrogant.

[61:34]

Maybe I was a little too speedy. Maybe I didn't listen. So mindfulness maybe notices the shortcomings in our carefulness. So now I'm feeling like mindfulness is more like, promotes practicing carefulness. And you can be careful, but it's hard to be careful. Actually, you succeed at being, you can try to be careful, and then you'll be unsuccessful if you don't pay attention. Like, I'd like to be careful, but I'm too busy to look at what I'm doing. So carefulness sort of needs mindfulness, and mindfulness can notice when you're not being careful. Very helpful, thank you. Welcome. And it's now 1120, which is pretty late. So is it OK if we

[62:25]

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