I was invited, I have a memory that I was invited by Timo some time ago to give a talk during the work week and then I got another invitation from Jeremy, a question from Jeremy about whether I was going to accept the invitation and then Timo asked me again and Jeremy asked me again and Anna asked me but I didn't say yes right away because I wasn't sure I didn't feel confident that it was my work to give a talk during work week. Part of the reason I felt that way is because I hadn't yet agreed to do the talk and I thought, well, do I have something to say that would be relevant during the work week? But I kept considering I kept contemplating the request and finally I thought, I think so.

[01:03]

And since that time I have really enjoyed contemplating what I'm going to talk to you about. And I wrote kind of at the top of a piece of paper, I wrote, freedom and bodhisattva work. Or freedom and bodhisattva practice. So what's bodhisattva work? you know, what do I think bodhisattva work is? I think it's like to take care of, to take care of what you think your life's about, to take care of what you

[02:22]

is your responsibility in this life. And I think this also applies to work in general. The bodhisattva's work is to care for the wish to live for the welfare of all beings. The bodhisattva's work is to care for, the sense of responsibility for the enlightenment and happiness of all living beings. That's their work. Where's Rebecca? Is she here? Is she on vacation? She's gone now? Bye, Rebecca. Rebecca said to me, is it okay if I tell people, Rebecca, what you said? she said in the dining room she said if you want to be a bodhisattva are you a bodhisattva and I said well in a way I won't say no but rather that if you want to be a bodhisattva you become a bodhisattva by taking care of your wish to be a bodhisattva if you want to

[03:51]

work for the welfare and enlightenment of all beings, and then you take care of that wish, you become a bodhisattva. And the work of taking care of that wish is bodhisattva work, I would say. So I have this thought that some people see people's faces Sometimes they see their own face in a mirror, or they see their own face in water, and they see other people's faces, and also some people see the land and apples, and they feel that these faces are demanding somebody speak for them, somebody express what they need. The bodhisattva aspiration, the bodhisattva wish to realize authentic understanding for the welfare of all beings, that wish is realized by doing bodhisattva work, by training in bodhisattva work, which is to take care of this thing, this wish.

[05:27]

And I propose to you that this wish is a given. It's a given. And other people have other wishes too, which are given. That we feel pressing conditions in our life. And these are given to us. what we want to do with our life is given to us. I don't choose to have bodhisattva aspiration by myself. I don't think I want to live for the welfare of all beings. That thought is not created by me and that thought is not created by Buddha. But somehow that's offered to me and at some point I may receive it. And from then on, it's given to me.

[06:38]

It's been given. And now I have that given, that pressing given. So what has been offered to me, other things have been offered to me too. What has been offered to me, and I propose, what is offered to you, you don't get to choose what's offered to you. You don't get to choose what's presented to you. You don't get to choose who's crying in your face, who's asking for help. You don't get to choose that. That's not something that's given to you. But how you practice with it, that is freedom. And that's free. I took a little tour of Western Germany recently with Bernd Bender and Timo Blank and Stef Wenderski.

[07:41]

Well, it was pretty interesting, but I can't tell you the whole trip because you want to go to bed pretty soon. But I'll just tell you that one of the reasons for going on this trip was that when Timo was ordained as a priest, his uncle came from Germany, and I heard that his uncle was professional scholar of Heidegger. And I thought, oh, how wonderful. Excuse me, a professional scholar of Kant. And I've always felt very close to Kant by rumor, you know, because, you know, if you try to read Kant, it's very difficult, which I won't, if you want to hear later why it's difficult, I'll explain how I understand that. But it's quite difficult just to open Kant and read him And they say things about Kant which make him sound very interesting to me. Very similar, I feel, to some of our great ancestors.

[08:49]

His philosophy is very similar to some of our great ancestors. So I thought, oh, how wonderful to talk to somebody who can cut through and who has been studying this. And he said he would be happy to do that, but I didn't have time when he was here. So then the idea was he could come to Germany and we can talk. So I got a chance to talk to him. We talked for a long time and he spoke English some and some he was speaking German and Timo was translating. And so part of what he said actually helped me, I think, gave me some new perspectives on our practice, our bodhisattva practice. One of the things he said was, I think he said something like this, and Timur, you can, after a little while, not right away, you can refute me, okay? But let me get it out before you correct me. He said something like, you know, the human condition is that we feel some obligations, we feel some responsibility.

[09:59]

We have a consciousness which at a certain point in its development we feel some responsibility, some ethical responsibility. We feel that we should act a certain way. like it would be really good to be kind, for example. We feel, not only would it be good, but that we feel obligated or responsible to be kind, to help people. I don't know if anybody feels, I guess sometimes people feel obligated to be cruel, but You know, I've almost never in my life felt a responsibility to be cruel. I think I have been cruel, but I never felt like, it's my responsibility to be cruel to this person. I've always felt afterwards, how could I do that? That's not my responsibility. That was a mistake. That's the way I felt. Anyway, he said that Kant says that the human consciousness has a sense of responsibility in it,

[11:02]

and ethical responsibility. And he says that when you respect that, when you take care of that, anyway, he said respect, I'm adding, when you take care of that sense of responsibility, that is freedom. But I think Timo, and you can correct me on this right away, I think Timo liked this idea of respecting that sense of responsibility. Didn't you? Yeah. He didn't say when you when you're lined up with that responsibility or when you act in accord with that responsibility. He didn't say that. And I'm not saying he wouldn't agree that Kant wouldn't say that. He says Kant says when you respect it. So you feel the sense of responsibility and you respect it. You look at it. You say yes to it. Yes, I want to do this. You say it. Yes, yes, yes.

[12:07]

That's freedom. This is before you think about, well, how have I been acting recently? And before you think, well, what would that be like? It's first of all, yes. And I think that's very much still bodhisattva spirit too. You hear about these precepts and before you think about whether you're going to be able to practice them or not, something in you says yes. You're taking care of that sense of responsibility before you think about whether you can do it. A lot of people then, after they think about it, they say, I don't know if I can do it. So they kind of want to take back the yes. That's not freedom, of course. Now, Kant had this teaching, excuse me for getting into this, but anyway, Kant had this teaching which he called Critique of Pure Reason. And Timur's uncle, whose name is Bernwart, his uncle said,

[13:12]

what he said was that there's a practical critique of pure reason and a theoretical critique of pure reason. The practical critique of pure reason is, and this part I don't know if you would agree with, is you have and ethical consciousness and ethical imperative and ethical responsibility as a human being. And when you respect that, when you say yes to that, you are free. That's the practical critique of pure reason. And then when you don't get distracted from it by all your judgments about everybody and yourself, that's cultivating caring for this, which is freedom. That's the practical critique of pure reason. The theoretical critique of pure reason is it is impossible to know the reality of freedom.

[14:25]

This freedom which is the life of respecting your sense of responsibility in this life, that freedom is impossible to know the reality of it. In other words, that freedom is beyond any idea you have about it. You're living that way and you're free, but any idea you have about how you're free has nothing to do with the freedom. Your ideas, my ideas, of freedom, do not reach freedom. In other words, freedom is innocent of any ideas we have of it. It's ungraspable, but it's realized through practice of caring for your, for example, your sense of responsibility for the welfare of all beings. If you respect that, you are free, and that freedom cannot be known by, you know, by human consciousness or human perception, but it can be realized.

[15:34]

So, and this is a statement I made just as we were getting on the train, and he said yes, and Timo was amazed that he said yes. I said, so is it correct that the theoretical critique of pure reason for Kant and the practical critique of pure reason for Kant meet at freedom? And he said yes. And Timo was surprised he didn't say, well, you know, he just said yes. That's where they meet. And in Buddhist terminology, the form of the practice meets the emptiness of the practice at freedom. The form of the practice meets, it becomes freedom at its emptiness, and emptiness becomes freedom when it connects to form. Like, for example, respecting your sense of responsibility.

[16:35]

That's a form, that's a feeling, that's a perception, whatever. That's something which you can know and care for, and caring for that is freedom. Once again, I propose that our work, our responsibility, our obligation, the givens of our life condition, of our human condition, they can become for us like, you know, a slogan, a banner, a symbol. You know, bodhicitta can become like a symbol for our life. We can use it that way. And that's given to us.

[17:44]

That symbol of our life, the bodhisattva vow as a symbol of our life can be given to us And then we're free to interpret it moment by moment. What our work is, is given to us. How we interpret it is free. So I could say more about this and probably will for the rest of my life, but I'm going to stop now and just give you a practical example of some work that some people feel called or given, some work

[18:54]

that some people feel called to do because of what they've been given. And it came up when I saw this Bay Guardian, this Bay Guardian recent one. And the big headline on it is, Women's Work. See, Women's Work. And it's got this woman with a megaphone. Everybody know what a megaphone is? Mm-hmm. Do you know what a megaphone is, Gina? See, this is a megaphone. This woman is talking through the megaphone. She's trying to make herself heard. And she's probably, I would say, I guess she's trying to make somebody else's needs heard too, not just her own. And it says, coming out of the megaphone, it says, as the war on women rages, Bay Area feminism comes to the fore. So I thought, well, maybe I'll look at this here.

[19:59]

And I looked, and I finally found just a short kind of article in here, just like two pages. Here's the article. It has a picture of six women on it. What? has a picture of seven women. And so I started to read, but the way this thing's laid out is it has, for each woman, it has above her, her name in red, and then it has like a little short summary from each one of them about, what they're working on, what their work is. Each one is talking about their work. And I confess that when I read about their work, you know, which was under the rubric, the big red rubric of women's work, I thought, wow, this is surprising.

[21:22]

I hadn't thought of this as women's work. some of these things you'll hear about. Sometimes I ask people, humans, what's the most important thing in your life? And the people I run into often say, you know, to benefit all beings. to make the world a safer place for living beings, to understand the dharmas in order to help beings. People say things like that to me, as you might imagine. But occasionally they say, most important thing is to take care of my family, to take care of my children, to make sure that they're safe and healthy and happy. And the people who say that are often women. And then they sometimes say, and all sentient beings. But sometimes women say to me, most important is to take care of my babies.

[22:22]

So I understand that women who have children sometimes feel their work is But what is it? Their obligation, their responsibility is to take care of these children and their work is taking care of that responsibility. Even when the children are not around, they respect their responsibility and are thinking about it. So if I pick up this article and I hear that the women's work is taking care of children, I won't be surprised, right? But I was surprised by what I found, I must admit. And you hear why, maybe. And before I get into this, I just want to say that there's a historical figure in the background of San Francisco, particularly, and the person's name is Harvey Milk. Does anybody not know who Harvey Milk is? Gina, do you know? So Harvey Milk is a gay man

[23:30]

who lived in San Francisco and he ran for city council. And I believe he was the first gay man to be elected to the city council. Is that right? Openly gay. Person. To be elected to the city council. And it was a big deal. And then somebody went insane and I think one of the other city council members went insane and killed the mayor of San Francisco and killed Harvey Milk, assassinated them. So Harvey Milk is kind of a martyr for the rights of gay people in San Francisco. So the name of this article... about women's work as faces of feminism.

[24:32]

And I feel a little funny about reading this to you, but I think I better read it rather than just tell you. So it says here that in San Francisco... No, it says, is San Francisco still on the cutting edge of women's issues? And... This is the question written by Caitlin Donahue, the author of this, or the organizer of this article, because she interviewed these seven women that are here. And she said she's been doing research for an upcoming panel discussion, which will be sponsored by this newspaper, a panel discussion on Bay Area feminism today. And she was doing research. She was looking into the city's rich record of feminist activism for inspiration for this upcoming panel discussion.

[25:38]

And then she says that the amazing females, the event will unite amazing females across the city who have but one thing in common. They're pushing the envelope when it comes to the definition of what women's issues are. And, yeah, I think they're pushing the envelope. That's part of the reason why I was so surprised, because they're pushing the envelope of what are women's issues. And they explain in what they say why they think these things, which people don't usually think of women's issues as women's issues. I just wanted to tell you a little bit about things that they think are women's issues, which might be surprising to you. I must, again, admit, I was surprised that they saw some of these things as women's issues.

[26:42]

Caitlin Donahue says, women's work, colon, is alive and kicking. And it deserves its moment in the spotlight. So here's the panelists. How's it going? Is it okay? Am I reading this to you? It is... It's not okay with... It's not okay with you? Could you just say what your reason? I'm not getting the point. And... How is that you brought this to us with respect? Okay. Okay. So, thank you. I thought I would read this because I thought that these women explained what their work was and the reason that they're into this work.

[28:02]

I thought that they expressed... yeah, what they felt their responsibility was in their life and what work they're doing in relationship to their sense of responsibility. So it would be parallel to me sort of saying that I talked to some young people at Green Gulch about, they told me about why they're working in the farm, you know, what responsibility they feel such that they thought that this work would be appropriate to take care of that responsibility. And I just, thinking about this talk, I saw this thing, women's work. And I thought, oh, let's see what women's work is. And I thought that they, in fairly briefly, explained what their work is and what their motivation for this work was. And I feel a request that I talk about this.

[29:06]

I feel that's given to me, that I've been asked to do this by women, that I've been asked to share the suffering that women feel for women. So I thought this would be an opportunity for me to do that. Does that make more sense for you? Thank you for being honest and saying no. And I'll check after each one and see how you're doing, okay? Each one is really good. I don't know which one to start with because I hate to miss it. I think I'll start with this one. So this woman's name is Laura Thomas. She's Deputy State Director of Drug Policy Alliance. And she says, ending the failed war on drugs is a women's issue. because women are far too often bearing the brunt of that failure, losing their freedom, children, economic independence, safety, health, and sometimes their lives as victims of the war on drugs.

[30:25]

So Laura says, my major project for the Drug Policy Alliance is mobilizing San Francisco to show the rest of the world how effective progressive drug policy can be. And then she says over and over, I want. I want to see San Francisco open the first supervised injection facility in the United States to end the new HIV hepatitis C infections among new drug users. I want us to truly have effective, culturally appropriate substance use treatment for everyone who requests it. I want San Francisco to end the cycle of undercover drug buys dash incarceration recidivism. I want us to address the appalling racial disparities in who gets arrested, convicted, and incarcerated for drug offenses here.

[31:31]

I want us to aggressively defend our groundbreaking, well-regulated medical cannabis dispensaries systems against all federal intervention. San Francisco is leading the way in the United States in addressing the harms of drug use and drug prohibition, but we have a lot more to do. And I see this as a women's issue. How's that going? So this is her responsibility. This is her work. She wants to not just protect women, but particularly she feels they bear the brunt. This next person is Stephanie Ashley, and she's the St. James Infirmary Programs Director and ex-president of Harvey Milk, LGBT Democratic Club.

[32:36]

LBGT means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual Democratic Club. You following this, Anna? She says, for me, sex worker rights are a feminist issue because they are about body autonomy. As much as reproductive choice is a feminist issue, so too is the right to determine the ways in which we use our bodies, change our bodies, and take care of our bodies. Celeste Chan, artist and founder of Queer Rebels. My partner KB Joyce and I started our production company, Queer Rebels, to honor the feminist and queer of color artists and the elders who have paved the way.

[33:49]

Our main project is Queer Rebels of Harlem Renaissance. a performance extravaganza which took place June 28th to 30th. The Harlem Renaissance legacy remains with us to this day. Do you know what Harlem is? Harlem's a section of New York that had this great, this great uprising of all kinds of art, poetry and music, painting, written back in the last century. So these people are trying to honor that Renaissance, that explosion of art and intellect and sexual liberation led by, she says this, I didn't know this, queer black artists. I'm also on the board, I'm a board member on the Community United Against Violence

[34:53]

CUAV was founded in the wake of Harvey Milk's assassination and the White Knights riots and does incredible work to address violence against and within the LGBTQ community. Another way I'm involved with women's issues is through the FOM conference F-E-M-M-E, in a culture where femininity is both devalued and expected to be the norm, FOM conference creates a vital feminist space. That's three of them. And, uh, I could post maybe the rest.

[35:58]

You see, and when I read these, I'll tell you what these people, what are their titles. This woman's name is Mia Tumuch. She's a transgender activist and San Francisco Youth Conference officer. So that's one other one of them. And another one is an attorney, an elected member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. And so she's an elected member of that organization, and she's working to involve the party in recruiting more women to run for political office. And there's a Latino woman, and there's also a DJ and promoter of queer nightlife who is trying to create, you know, space for LGBTQ people to get together in a safe environment, you know, to develop their community.

[37:08]

So these are examples of people who are working to take care of their sense of responsibility. And I wonder, you know, for each of us here at Green Gulch, particularly this week, how, you know, maybe, you know, I can imagine some of you are like feeling a responsibility to care for Green Gulch, like the work in the auto shop, you know. Someone might feel the responsibility. I felt some responsibility in response to the broken cement floor in the auto shop for 40 years. Maybe not 40, maybe 36. I've been wondering. It's almost impossible to keep the auto shop tidy because the floor is you can't clean the floor because it's just a big pile of rocks and i and i've been talking to timo about it and so now this thing's happening and but it seems like i was concerned i had some sense of responsibility for

[38:25]

Green Gulch being cared for. In some situations it's really hard to care for unless you do something to make it possible to care for. So now it will be possible to care for the water shop. I mean, after tomorrow it will be possible. Right now it's not done yet. And also the pile of pipes and tubes and stuff at the end of the recycling area. That's been something for quite a while. That's been worked on. This is coming perhaps from a sense of caring for this place, of making it a more wholesome and, yeah, a more wholesome, beneficial place for living beings. Maybe that's why many of you came here to work on the farm, in the garden, in the kitchen, and on all these different projects. to care for your sense of responsibility in this life. And I'm proposing along with Kant and I think our Bodhisattva tradition that saying yes to your sense of responsibility over and over throughout the day, to keep in touch with it and say yes to it,

[39:46]

and not get distracted by it, by this mind that we have, which is judging and judging ourselves and others and so on. And sometimes we get distracted from what is actually our responsibility and the work that takes care of it. So do you have any critique on my comments on Kant? I was very happy actually to be reminded. I forgot most of it. His uncle also said, you know, we can't really control, you know, what we're thinking.

[40:47]

You know, like we can't really control, oh, I think that person's being ethical, or I think that person's not being ethical. That stuff just flies up in our mind all the time, you know, or that I'm not being ethical. We can't really control wondering if, you know, what ethics is or whether we're in accord with it. All that stuff's just flying up. We can't control anything, but still, if we are focused on our responsibility, we are free in the midst of all this greed, hate, and delusion flying around. It's not our responsibility to be greedy. It's not our responsibility to hate. It's not our responsibility to be confused. That's given to us. But also, there's other things given to us, a sense of responsibility in such a place. a sense of, you know, to bring benefit to beings who are living in the midst of greed, hate and delusion.

[41:53]

That's given to us along with the greed, hate and delusion. And if we take care of that, we find freedom in the greed, hate and delusion. And the way we relate to it, or I should say, the way our life relates to this responsibility is a process of freedom. And True freedom does not break away from this environment, namely the world of birth and death, of greed, hate, and delusion. Any feedback? Yes. Your description of freedom sounds a lot like karma to me. The description of freedom sounds a lot like karma. Like the description of karma that I've heard before.

[42:54]

What's the description of karma? That to be free of karma you have to be intimate with karma. Oh, you mean the freedom I'm talking about sounds like the way you've heard of relating to karma that's freedom. Yes. That's right. Same thing. our sense of responsibility appears in a karmic form. It's given to us. It's a karmic phenomena. It's a wish. It's a sense of responsibility. It also is a karmic thing, completely constructed, just like other karmic entities. Yes, I'm really sorry, but I'm having a really hard time just bridging this gap of obligation, responsibility, precondition, the right, and freedom.

[44:03]

Like, those all seem... I don't know. The things you first mentioned are not freedom. Right. They're givens. Right. Freedom is to respect that. along with other givens, but particularly to respect your sense of responsibility in this life. That's the only place where we can be free, is in our response to those? That's the only place we can be free, and that place where we are free is right in the middle of where we're not free. But it's, you know, among the various things in our life, not everything is a sense of responsibility. We don't feel, like I said, I don't feel obligated to be cruel. I don't feel anybody's asking me to be unkind.

[45:06]

But I feel a request inwardly and outwardly to be kind. I feel it's my responsibility. I feel it's my real work. And that's your freedom also. Your responsibility and your freedom at this. No, my responsibility isn't my freedom. Respecting it is my freedom. Being there for how it works itself out. But it's not, how it's given to me is not free. Right. but how it works itself out is free. And if I'm respecting it, I'm on the freedom page. And also the other part of it, which is nice, is to remember that you don't get to see the freedom, but you do get to see that you're respecting your sense of responsibility. You do get to see that you're really devoted to your ethical responsibility. You get to see that you really do want for example, to live in a way that protects women from violence.

[46:11]

You do want to do that. And you feel not only you want to, but you feel, I really kind of need to. It won't work out if I don't. And I say yes to that over and over. I keep saying yes to that. I keep coming back to that. That is freedom. However... The other side, which I think is nice, that Buddhism says, and Kant says, you cannot grasp. There's no substantiality to that freedom. If it were, then it would have to be someplace else than the place it's supposed to operate. But it never separates us from the world. It keeps us together with the world of suffering because not only can't we grasp it, but we can't go towards it or away from it. But in the practice of being devoted to ethics, that is freedom. So simple, but very difficult to stay with the pressing part, the deep requests that are being made of us.

[47:17]

and to listen to them and to say yes to them in the midst of all the changes. I've been recently mentioning, you know, there's a famous case. It's famous at Zen Center because people talk about it a lot. It's a case from the Book of Serenity, Case 37. It starts out with the Zen teacher Guishan saying to his student Yangshan, All sentient beings just have karmic consciousness, boundless and unclear, with no fundamental to rely on. But another translation of unclear is giddy. All sentient beings just have karmic consciousness, boundless and giddy, with no fundamental to rely on. And giddy means to be excited to the point of disorientation. We have a mind which is very excited and it actually is so exciting that it disorients us over and over from our sense of our responsibility.

[48:25]

But that's not the end of the story because the sense of responsibility can reemerge and we can say yes to it. Even though we just forgot it, we can say yes to it again. And then, again, karmic consciousness goes, hey, you've got better things to do than that. Or, you're no good at this, or you can't do that. You'll never be able to take care of such a big responsibility. Forget it. Well, maybe I should, what should I do? Rather than, thank you very much, I remember, but I'm still remembering what my responsibility is, even though I have really been challenged just now. by that slap in the face, by that compliment, by that wink, by that pain, by that headache. Oh, my head hurts. What was it again? What was my responsibility? I can't remember. Headaches are karmic consciousness. Yeah. So there. remembering and realizing what our responsibility is is not karmic consciousness?

[49:35]

Did you say it's not? No, remembering it's karmic consciousness and saying yes to it's karmic consciousness. But saying yes to it is karmic consciousness realizing freedom. And saying, well, I don't know, maybe later. That's karmic consciousness which is stalling. you know, which isn't quite ready to open to freedom right here and now. So there's an aspect of karma consciousness that actually opens things up for us? As well as inhibiting us? Yes, it's called wholesome karma. Like I was saying to some people the other day, wholesome karma is like you look at somebody and you think, practice. You look at somebody and it's like they've got written on their forehead, Remember to practice. Take care of all sentient beings. You look in their eyes and you hear the Buddha talking. Don't forget to care for everybody.

[50:37]

That's like, that's karma that you think, that linguistic thing that you heard sort of subtly coming off their forehead. That's karma. That's karmic consciousness. And it's a little bit disorienting, but it's disorienting if you're not already oriented. And if you're already oriented, it keeps you oriented. So for quite a long time, I've been thinking that karmic consciousness was simply something to be overcome and not something that could aid practice. Yeah, it can aid your practice and it needs to be overcome. And it needs to be overcome without messing with it. True practice. True practice. This karmic consciousness can be trained to be kind to karmic consciousness and open to the reality of karmic consciousness, which is that it is simply completely constructed.

[51:43]

I wonder if relaxation and people are intentionless. You're wondering if relaxation... Excuse me, you're wondering... I'm not following you. You're talking too fast. Okay. Thank you. So, in freedom, that was going to come back in the end of the sentence, I thought, in the beginning. But in freedom, could you include relaxation and intentionless activity? In freedom, you can include everything. Even if you have favorites, they're also allowed. Good. I was just wondering, because it sounded much like It was just a kind of a striving kind of work. It was a work of achieving something. Freedom was trying to achieve something, did you say?

[52:49]

No, freedom is not trying to achieve anything. I apologize. I meant to bring up something a little heavy, I think. But I feel some sense of responsibility, and I think some other people do too, for a woman who was just shot in the back 13 times in Afghanistan because she was accused of adultery by a group of people that we are currently at war with called Taliban. And I think some of the people who engage in that war do so because they feel a sense of responsibility to the women of Afghanistan. And I wonder, like, I feel responsible for her, too. And how, for me, it's like where a rubber hits the road.

[53:52]

Like, what do I do with that sense of responsibility? are going to war, which, you know, the Buddha did not teach us to go to war, so that seems to be kind of out. But how do we take care of beings in such situations? How do I take care of this being, of other beings? We have that question, and is asking that question part of what you feel is, you said that's part of what you feel is your responsibility. I felt responsible to say, to talk, to bring this up. I felt responsibility to say this right now. Yeah, so what I'm saying is, along with that, perhaps you could notice that when you say yes to that sense of responsibility, before you say anything, you're free. And then you can enjoy how that freedom works itself out in your life.

[54:59]

But what about the woman? What about the woman? What about her? Well, do you feel like what you just said harms the woman? I don't think it helps her. You don't think it helps her. So that's an example of where your judgment comes in where you think that you're bringing this up didn't help her. Right? That's your opinion. I don't know if you're bringing that up helps. I'm saying this article is about women. Some women think they care for the welfare of women and they think it might help if they speak about it. But they don't know if it helps either. But they feel as part of their concern to make women accessible to a life of safety and health, they feel that speaking would be appropriate.

[56:01]

They do more than speak, too. They all are engaged in activities. to help people. They don't just speak. Well, they don't just speak. They speak and they make physical gestures, right? They sign employment applications to be, you know, work in these offices and stuff. So they speak and they also use their hands to do the work, yeah. But you're talking now, your example was, this current example was speaking. you could have gotten up and danced. Right? And if you danced, you might have thought, I don't think my dance helped protect women. You might have thought that. Someone else might have thought, I think your dance did protect women. These are our human opinions about what's helpful. I don't know if this conversation is helping women. But I feel you felt a sense of responsibility. And I'm saying before you spoke...

[57:05]

Right there, if you said yes to that responsibility and you spoke, you were free before you spoke. That's what I'm saying to you. And freedom facilitates action which is expressing your responsibility. But we don't know what's helpful. We just are working in accord with our responsibility or not. And we can get distracted from facilitating our responsibility by our own judgments. Like some people think, oh, I feel the misery of women who are exposed to violence, and I just feel like giving up. There's nothing I can do. Those are human thoughts. well, something's missing here. Does the person feel responsible?

[58:08]

Do they feel it? Where do they feel responsible? And are they caring for that sense? Are they saying yes to that over and over? That's where the energy to continue to work in this direction goes. But how does it work? I don't know. What's helpful? I don't know. What's freedom? I don't know. Although I don't know what freedom is, I'm saying this is freedom. And from that, I gave the talk tonight. I listened to you. And the question is, from me to you is, do you feel that responsibility? Do you say yes to it? And I'm saying to you, when you say yes to it, when you respect it, just plain yes. without yet getting into what's helpful or the impossibility to really know what's helpful, that you say yes anyway. I vow to take care of beings who I cannot control, but I'm still devoted to them.

[59:15]

And in my attempt to live for their welfare, I don't know how I'm helpful. And if they tell me I'm not helpful, I'll listen to that, because I think that's in accord, but I don't know if it is. Maybe I should cover my ears sometimes. Who knows? I don't. But I'm proposing to you that freedom is respect for your sense of responsibility. And before you spoke, apparently you felt a sense of responsibility before you spoke, and then you spoke from that sense of responsibility according to the story I heard you tell. I'm asking you, did you enjoy the marvelous freedom of saying yes to that sense of responsibility before you spoke? Did I enjoy it? Did you notice that you were acting on that because you believed that that's the path you wish to walk, of respecting your sense of responsibility?

[60:20]

Oh, I felt afraid. Afraid. Yeah, so I'm suggesting to you that it would help you with that fear, because sometimes when you have a sense of responsibility and then you think, maybe I should say something, you might be afraid. On the other hand, if you have a sense of responsibility and you enjoy that sense of responsibility, which you understand is your freedom in this life, and it is the source of benefiting beings, is that freedom. That's where people can be free from suffering, is right there. Then the thought of fear might still arise if you think of saying something. However, you are now... have something free. You can still perhaps, you're not, what do you call it? You're free. You can be free of your fear. In that freedom, you can realize that the things you're afraid of are not external to you.

[61:33]

But if you miss the central point of your sense of responsibility, your devotion to bodhisattva ethics, if you miss that, if you don't notice that, then you're acting sort of from your opinions and fears. You sort of miss the fact that you didn't enjoy, you didn't enjoy your sense of responsibility. Enjoy doesn't necessarily mean like. It means, you know, receive it. Receive it. It's given to you. It's given to you. And once it's given to you, then you're free to express it. Or I shouldn't say even you. Once it's given, your life is free to express. do whatever dance sing talk make out employment application raise your fist whatever that's your life expressing itself from the freedom of completely accepting and saying yes to what's been given to you what's been given to you is i really think that's not what i want

[62:47]

in this world is people treating each other that way. I really don't want that. I want that to stop. I want people to be free of that. I want that. And I feel responsibility in relationship to it. And it's given to me. And I can't control that. Even if it goes away, I can't control that either. And then the next responsibility that comes. I'm suggesting to say yes to that. he has a place to start. To say yes to that which is an example of bodhisattva precepts. The precept of not killing. Of not slandering. Of not hating. And so on. All those precepts are realized and all those precepts when we respect them. Not when we're like trying to control them, but when we respect them before we act any more than our karmic consciousness saying, yes.

[63:50]

You're welcome. Yes. You alluded a few times to sometimes there are certain look at their ideas or people or situations that can distract us for a moment, whether it's a headache or whatever, from that responsibility that we are given. Yeah, I think I did say that, but what I mean is karmic consciousness in that form is naturally distracting. Right. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but what's really standing out to me right now is it seems like those things that serve to distract us from that are among the most important things to be kind to or to open to? Of course. But when you're kind to them, if you happen to have bodhisattva sense of responsibility, you might have been acting from that sense of saying yes to that responsibility so that you weren't distracted.

[65:00]

When you remember to be kind, you're not distracted if you have bodhisattva sense of responsibility to those things. So it's not the things that are distracting you. It's only your common consciousness that when you get distracted by those things, it's not really by those things, it's by your response to them. But you're right. Those things, all those things, by some people's sense of responsibility, all those things are objects of compassion. That's part of what this thing's about, is that some people think that people who take drugs shouldn't be given sterile equipment. Because they're doing something evil, therefore we shouldn't be kind to them and protect them from disease. Right? These women don't agree with that. They think everybody, including drug users, should be treated with compassion. That's their sense of responsibility.

[66:07]

It's not that drugged users are distracting us from our sense of responsibility. Our own mind is distracting us. It's our karmic consciousness that distracts us, like judging people, ourselves or others, and thinking, this person or I don't deserve compassion. It's not the thing. It's the karmic consciousness that's distracting. So if I said that things distract us, I take it back. It's the karmic consciousness about the things. So, when a judgment arises, karmic consciousness can distract us from being kind to that judgment. It strikes me that it's very easy to fall into, well, I need to get this karmic consciousness out of the way so I can go on with being a bodhisattva. Right. That's what John was saying. So, we need to do both. We need to realize we need to not cut ourselves away from what can distract us. No, that's what you open to.

[67:12]

That's what you open to. The karmic consciousness or the distraction. You open to the karmic consciousness dash distraction from what? From freedom. From just saying yes. Yes. Yes. What's helping me translate what you're saying is giving space to everything. Giving space to everything. Giving space is a form of respect. So just giving space to yourself, to this woman, giving space to her in this group is respecting her. Do you feel a responsibility to give space to everything? Yeah, well, everything, yeah. Yeah, so you feel a responsibility to give space to all these things, right? That's what you feel. So I'm just saying, take care of that, and that's where your freedom is, or that's where the freedom of your life is, is taking care of what you feel is what you feel is a responsibility.

[68:20]

That's your way of putting it. That's my way of putting it. That's my way of putting it, my way of taking care of it. And I'm just saying, all you got to do is respect that all the time. And then you're turning into freedom all the time. Including that sometimes, maybe not you, but somebody who has the same sense of responsibility as you, namely give space to everything, that sometimes the thought arises, not this time. And then they forget to give space to, not this time. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's what you want, right? Yeah. That's what you want, and you feel responsible to that, right? Not always. Yeah, not always. Not always. And then we have a practice which goes with this called confession and repentance, which is where we say, oh, I just forgot.

[69:30]

I forgot to say yes to my responsibility. I said I either forgot what my responsibility is or I forgot to say yes to it, and I'm sorry. and now I want to go back to take care of and say yes to my responsibility. If you do that enough, the proposal is that you actually stop forgetting eventually and you stay on the beam. But quite a few times usually are required. Yeah. One more comment? Yeah, please. So, karmic consciousness brought Shokuchi the freedom to speak when she spoke. Karmic consciousness brought her the freedom to speak. Yeah. Mm-hmm. No, not karmic consciousness didn't bring her to...I think, what brought her to the freedom to speak?

[70:44]

She was given the freedom to do the karmic thing of speaking. Karmic consciousness didn't give her the freedom. Karmic consciousness was given to her and she was also given the opportunity to speak freely. A little confused. That's karmic consciousness. Right? Yeah. That's given to you. Okay? Now, when karmic consciousness is given to you in the form of I'm a little confused, then what's your responsibility in that case? my responsibility would be to accept that and work with that. Yeah, right. So the accepting and working with karmic consciousness in the form of confusion is something you feel a responsibility to accept and work with in a compassionate way. Right, but I think I almost forgot about the compassion.

[71:50]

Yeah, well, when you said work, I mean, your work is compassion, right? Yes. Yeah. Your work is compassion because you feel a responsibility to be compassionate. So your work is to say yes to that, yes to that, and yes to that. Even when karmic consciousness comes in a familiar way called confusion, etc., And now you don't look so confused, but that's another kind of karma consciousness, which you also want to be kind to. So you're kind to any lack of confusion that should happen to show up. You would be kind to that in the form of not trying to hold on to it. Right? Not to hold on to my confusion? No, not to hold on to your freedom from confusion. Now I'm confused again. But that's good. Well, when you came back to confusion, yeah, it's good. Now that you came back to confusion, you just actually didn't hold on to your lack of confusion.

[72:54]

Which is what you want to do. You don't want to hold on to your confusion, right? That's right. It's not compassionate to be greedy and clinging to freedom from confusion. Because freedom from confusion is not the slightest bit separate from confusion. It's not cut off from the confusion. So we're talking here. You said you were confused. We talked a while. You kind of got clearer. And then I just mentioned what we shouldn't hold on to that. You got confused again. You followed my instruction. And you're free. There's your freedom right there. And I don't know what it is. And neither do you. And nobody can hold on to it or get away from it. The freedom is circulating freely in this room. And Carolyn's pointing to her wrist, which means it's time to stop. May our intention equally extend to every being and place. With the true faith of this way.

[73:54]

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