Loving All Being and Resistance 

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Please bear with me if I say something wrong.
Something that sounds sort of grand.
The Buddha way is love for all beings.
The Buddha way is compassion for all beings.
I guess that that, although it's kind of a grand statement,
I guess that that's not a big shock to you.
If it is, please let me know.
But I propose that as an idea.
That's what the Buddha way, the way of the Buddhas is.
Another way I've been saying it lately is
that the Buddha way is helping others.
And then further, I would offer that the Buddha way is to love all beings.
Without dwelling in them.
To wholeheartedly care for all beings
in such a way that there's no attachment to them.
And I would like to turn that around and say
that when we do love beings wholeheartedly,
we are not attached to them.
Now you may think that there's some beings you're not attached to,
but you don't feel like you're attached to them.
Unless you love them with your whole heart.
But I propose that if we love someone with our whole heart,
we're not attached to them.
You can love someone a great deal and still be somewhat attached,
but if you exercise the love more and more fully to the end,
there will not be attachment in the Buddha way.
And this is what makes it possible to love all beings.
To love all beings without dwelling in them
is to love all beings with perfect wisdom.
And I say perfect wisdom, but you could also say
the perfection of wisdom, but maybe better to say
to love all beings with perfecting wisdom,
an ongoing perfecting of wisdom,
by loving each and every being
without dwelling in them.
And I think I might get back to this,
but I also say this kind of love of all beings,
which is in accord with perfect wisdom,
and which does not create attachment,
is to love beings with no resistance
to the beings or to the love.
And I'll amplify on this resistance later, I hope.
So, I'm suggesting that the love which is the Buddha way,
the love which is the Buddha way of loving all beings,
that that love includes
not abiding in any of the beings that we love.
And since we love all beings, it means that this love
requires not abiding in anything.
So the mind of the Bodhisattva, the being
in the evolutionary process of helping others
completely, that being has a mind of no abode,
and that mind of no abode, that mind of perfect wisdom
requires love of all beings.
Perfect wisdom requires love of all beings.
And vice versa.
Love of all beings requires perfect wisdom.
This is a proposal of cause and effect.
This year, I promise to concentrate on
the Buddha's teaching,
the Buddha's teachings of causation.
Love for all beings is the cause of perfect wisdom.
Perfect wisdom is the cause of the love of all beings.
Perfect wisdom is no resistance to any and all beings,
and no resistance to any and all beings is perfect wisdom.
In this case, these causes and effects are part of one thing.
They are causes and effect, they depend on each other,
they mutually cause each other,
they arise through mutual dependence,
and this arising is the arising of the Buddha way.
Helping others arises with others helping us.
So, in echoing or resonating with a famous
and wonderful expression by our ancestor,
A.H. Dogen, I would say that to love...
Now, this is something new, watch.
To love the Buddha way is to love the self.
To love the way of helping others is to love the self.
And to love the self is to forget the self.
To love the self into oblivion.
I'm tempted to say to love the self to death,
but that sounds like killing, so I just say
love the self into oblivion.
And by loving the self into oblivion,
the self is saved.
By loving the self into oblivion,
all events realize the self.
Everything that happens to the self,
which has been loved into oblivion,
are enlightening.
To love the self in the context of the Buddha way
is to love all beings.
So this is kind of a new definition of loving the self.
This isn't, again, liking the self,
and this isn't liking all beings.
You can like them, it's fine,
and you may dislike them, actually,
that's welcome too.
But what's being encouraged is loving them,
which is neither like or dislike.
And the love can be there when there's like and dislike,
which, as you know, there is.
I mean, there seems to be.
But this love of the self,
this thorough love of the self,
is the same as loving all beings.
And that's the same as to forget
all beings who are loved.
But, I just said,
the Buddha way is to forget
all beings that are loved.
The Buddha way is to love all beings
and to forget all beings who are loved.
In other words, don't dwell on them.
But, I would suggest
that we don't forget any beings
before we love them.
And not only that, but don't forget them
before you love them all the way.
Remember them until you can love them
without dwelling on them.
I would suggest that to me and you.
So it isn't like, OK, I loved him,
I can move on to the next person.
No, I need to love him
until I don't dwell on him.
And you may think,
well, I love him and I don't dwell on him.
Well, I would say, just to make sure,
love him more.
Say, well, I loved him more,
I still don't dwell on him.
OK, well, how about a little bit more?
No, actually, I've got to move on to the next person now.
Are you going to come back?
Now, really, take a particular person
or a particular being.
A being could be like a rock,
a tomato, your own fear.
I love my own fear, but I'm not dwelling on it.
OK, love it some more.
Are you really completely willing to spend your whole life
devoted to your fear
until you love it completely
and have forgotten it and not abiding in it?
Yes? OK, well, go ahead and do that.
And let us know when you feel like you've reached
complete love without dwelling in your fear.
Or in your spouse, or in your children,
or in your parents, or in your friends.
Come back and tell us
when you completely love one being
with no attachment.
And that you love your attachments completely
with no attachment.
Because you can say, in a sense,
beings are a kind of attachment.
So we're not trying to get rid of attachment,
we're just trying to be with attachment
in such a way that doesn't create attachment.
This is called forgetting the Buddha way,
forgetting the self,
and forgetting the beings who we live for and die for.
So again, don't forget any beings
that you're loving until
the forgetting happens
at the ultimate point of the love.
And if you think you've reached that place,
then it's good to find a Buddha
and bring your Buddhahood to meet that Buddha.
Check it out.
One other way to say it?
We have not fully loved a being
until we have forgotten them.
We have not fully loved a being
until we can't find them anymore.
And not only can't find them,
but know that nobody can find them.
Then we're really in love.
I have another page of notes
on this line of talk,
but I'm going to stop
because I feel like now may be the time
to talk about resistance.
Because after all, it is about 10.39
or 10.37, is that right?
So I probably should stop
pretty soon.
Let us not resist.
Let us not resist.
So I haven't been talking to you
in this way for a few days.
The last few days I have not been talking to you like this.
So, right?
So, you've not been listening to me
talk like this for the last few days,
so you may not have too much resistance to what I'm saying
for the last few days.
But if you had been, you probably would be resisting
what I'm saying.
Yeah, sort of what I'm saying.
And also what I'm talking about.
But when I do talk to people this way,
they do come to me and say,
you know, I kind of resist what you're talking about.
I resist, I must admit, I resist
living for the sake of all beings.
I resist it.
Now when somebody tells me that,
I think that's an expression
of loving his, of loving his self.
That he looks and sees that he's resisting
and he comes and talks, he takes care of that resistance
and comes and talks to me or somebody else about it.
It's actually quite kind to recognize it
and to bring it to discuss
in a kind of calm
and loving environment.
Let's look at this resistance, shall we?
A person is resisting this wonderful thing.
How dare you? No.
I'm resisting the Buddha way.
According to you, I'm resisting
living for the sake of all beings.
And I have the courage to be honest
and tell you I'm resisting what you say is the Buddha way.
And the person says,
what should I do about the resistance?
And I say, what should you do about the resistance?
You already know, right?
Love it.
Welcome it.
Live for the welfare of all beings.
I feel resistance to that.
Welcome the resistance.
Not like it, not ask for it to come necessarily,
you don't have to invite it unless you get special encouragement.
But when it comes, welcome it.
Be patient with it.
Don't look down at it
as less good than non-resistance.
Don't look down on half-heartedness
as not as good as wholeheartedness.
You might say, well, it is not as good.
Okay, fine.
Don't look down on not as good as less good than better.
Don't look down on anything.
Don't look down on the worst thing that there is
in your life.
Well, looking up to it might be okay.
So bodhisattvas are not supposed to look down on others.
Like, you know, I'm better than them.
But it is kind of okay to look up.
Others are better than me.
That's kind of okay.
But again,
if you're looking down on others, welcome it.
Love the fact that you think you're better than
quite a few people.
Love that, which means welcome it.
Be patient with it.
Be gentle with it.
Be flexible with it.
My resistance to living for the sake of all beings
and my resistance in the form of thinking
I'm better than other people.
My resistance in thinking people are not good.
My resistance in thinking this is not good and that's not good.
My resistance to actually things that are good,
like living for the welfare of all beings.
Be patient with that.
Gentle with that.
Flexible with that.
Non-violent with it.
Non-violent with resistance.
Not overbearing, like, get rid of the resistance.
Now, if there is, get rid of the resistance.
Be gentle with that.
There is apparently, according to stories,
a bunch of people in the history of the Buddhist tradition
who said, get rid of the resistance.
They did that to give students a chance to be gentle with them.
To meet them courageously and flexibly
and not be overbearing on the overbearing Bodhisattva teachers.
Who aren't really being overbearing,
they're just seeing if the students can not respond symmetrically.
Oh, poor teacher, you must be kind of stressed.
No, I was just testing to see if you could be kind to me when I'm being overbearing.
And, treating the resistance all these loving ways.
In this way, get to the point where you treat the resistance
without dwelling in it.
So then, the resistance
to living for the welfare of all beings
is the same as the resistance to living
without dwelling in anything.
And in this way of kindness, you get to the place
where you can actually be totally devoted
to whatever, your own resistance, your own fear,
other people's resistance, other people's fear,
other people's violence, other people's greed,
hatred, whatever, to meet that
with a welcoming, gracious heart,
a patient heart, a gentle, flexible,
non-violent, non-overbearing heart
which doesn't create any attachment.
And there's a wide variety of ways
of resistance to the Buddha way manifest,
but three I thought I might mention.
One is the one people usually mean by resistance,
where you hold back.
You hold back from giving your life
to the welfare of each and every being,
each and every human being,
to give your life fully to each being.
Some people would hold back from that, right?
Most of us can get in touch with a little bit
of holding back to some human beings.
Right? Some.
Some you feel like, I don't think I'm holding back with them.
OK, we'll hold that one over there for a second,
the one you don't think you're holding back.
But some you do feel like you're holding back.
So you can see that resistance.
I don't want to give my life to this person.
OK, there's a resistance.
I feel resistance to that. OK, fine.
We're with you.
We will be with you as long as you resist
giving yourself to this person.
We'll hang in there with you through this long path of resistance,
this long and ever-changing path of resistance
to helping this person wholeheartedly.
And also it's great that you notice it
and you can express it.
A lot of people are resisting giving themselves to people
or loving beings.
They don't even notice that they're resisting.
They're distracted from noticing that they're resisting this program
called the Buddha way.
But those who notice are really like
doing really well, I would say, to notice.
OK, what am I missing? I'm resisting the Buddha way.
How wonderful that I'm resisting such a wonderful thing.
I'm not resisting a petty thing,
but actually, now that I think of it,
I also resist petty things.
I resist being petty. I don't like being petty.
When I'm petty, I kind of like resist it.
So actually I push away being great
or I resist being great.
I hold back from being really great and magnanimous
and I also hold back from being really petty
and stingy and small and nasty.
So actually if you're great beings
who are living for the welfare of all beings
are not afraid of being petty
because pettiness is one of the beings they're devoted to.
When pettiness arises in themselves
they're patient and welcoming of it.
They're kind to their own pettiness.
And if they're afraid of their own pettiness
they're kind to their fear of being petty.
And if they meet other beings who are dabbling
or really heavily into pettiness
they welcome these, what do you call them,
these pettiness aficionados.
They welcome these beings, they welcome them,
they say, please come in, we're here for you.
What can we do to help you?
You can make me feel better about being petty, okay.
Well, I just want you to know
that you have my full support to be petty.
And you can be petty as long as you need to be
and I'm your supporter.
I hope someday that you won't dwell in the pettiness
after you really love it.
But right now, if you're dwelling in it
I am totally supporting you.
And I'm not dwelling, actually, in your dwelling in it
or getting you to get out of it.
I might not say that to the person
but that's my vow.
To learn that.
So that's one kind of resistance
which I guess is familiar to us.
Holding back, pushing away.
Another kind of resistance is
holding on.
So there's like pushing away
the life of living for the welfare of all
and each completely.
There's pushing that away or holding back from that.
And also when someone comes to me
and tells me that they're resisting it
and I'm nice to them about their resistance
to this great way of living
and they ask me what to do about it
and then they practice being kind to their own resistance
they often notice something else
in that the resistance is about fear.
That if we
actually open to loving all beings
to living for all beings
we might feel like we have nothing to hold on to.
So we're afraid of that.
So you discover more about yourself
as you notice your resistance and confess it.
The other kind of resistance is
when you first come to the Zen Center
most of us first came
some of you have been here a while
but when we first came
most of us I don't think
walked in the door and said
this is mine, I own the Zen Center.
Some of us may have felt like
I'm home but I don't own the house.
I don't know, is that true?
Did some of you come here and didn't immediately think you own the place?
But if you sweep the ground
and wash the floors and clean the windows
and straighten the cushions and cook the meals
and fix the tires
and pour gas into the cars
and maintain the cars
and be nice to the students
and love the students
and be devoted to the students
and be devoted to the garden and fix the roof
and you do that for a decade
then you might think
well actually I do own the Zen Center, it is mine.
That's the normal human tendency, it's my Zen Center.
I'm looking at somebody who built some buildings here recently
and when he first started building them
he might not have thought
it's my building
actually I don't even think he thinks it now
but if you built a building at Zen Center
you might think it's my building
and sometimes we talk that way
like that's so and so's building because they built it.
I have problems with the word
my student
try to avoid using my student
but the important thing is that I look in my heart and see
do I really think I own this person?
Is it really mine?
My children, my spouse, do I think they are mine?
So I watch and look at that
so that's another form of resistance
is to possess something, a being
it's a resistance to them
and again if you put more kindness towards them
it brings you more and more to the place
of noticing where you are being possessive
and see if you can find this way of being with them
without owning them, without abiding in them.
It's really quite a difficult
place to get to.
The Prajnaparamita, the perfect wisdom
is called the profound perfect wisdom
because profound means difficult
it's difficult to get to the place
with something where you don't dwell in it.
You have to love it really a lot
it's a big job, love it fully
not too much, not too little
in such a way as to not attach to it
that's very profound practice
dash difficult.
That's why we need to be patient
with our resistance in the process
because it's going to be very challenging
for us to find this place.
And again, be kind and patient
with ourselves on how long it takes
to fully love something
without attaching to it.
Many great beings in the past
have said this is difficult
who have been trying to practice this way.
Of course, loving something a lot
and being possessive of it
or loving something a lot
and being possessive of it
it does have the feedback often
we do get pain for that
that's cause and effect too.
If you love fully
but dwelling in what you love
I should say love almost fully
and dwell in it, it's painful
sometimes very painful
so what some people do is think
maybe if I love less
it will be less painful
so they try that, loving less
and that does sometimes reduce the pain
so loving less with dwelling reduces the pain
loving more with dwelling in some sense
might turn the pain up
but how about loving more and drop dwelling
I know this person who has had this problem
with me for a long time
that they really have been very kind to me
and loving to me and they have a big problem with me
and recently the person came and said
I still have this problem with you
and I've tried loving you less
as a way to cope with the problem
and that does kind of help a little bit
it numbs the pain
but it occurred to me recently that the problem I have with you
is I expect something of you
and I said, well I didn't say it
but I kind of feel, hallelujah
that's right, you've been expecting something
you've been expecting me to be a decent person
or a reasonably kind person
or something
or even a great loving teacher
whatever
now if some of you expect things of me
but don't give yourself to me it won't be so painful
but if you are devoted to me
and you dwell in me it will be painful
and for me towards you too
so that the dwelling does give feedback
does cause feedback
something's off here, the part that's off is the dwelling
but the non-dwelling doesn't just come from not paying attention
and not caring for things
we just don't notice that we're dwelling
and the other kind of dwelling
the other kind of resistance which I'm quite familiar with
is forgetting
so I'm not going to just flat out say
I don't want to be devoted to all beings
and I'm not saying I want to possess and control them all
so I can just resist
the project of being devoted
and not attaching by forgetting
just forget
so part of being whole hearted
is to remember
when you remember then you can notice you're resisting
when you resist the nice thing about
when you forget the nice thing is that you forget
you don't even notice that you're resisting
because you forgot what it is that you want to do
that you're resisting
so if you wish to practice the Buddha way
and if you agree with me
that it is simply, very simply
being devoted to all beings
living for the sake of all beings
making every action of body, speech and mind
for the sake of all beings
if you agree with me
then you may notice some resistance
and then let's help each other deal with the resistance
in this loving way
because resistance is a wonderful being to love
it's a wonderful actually
like a Bodhisattva
it's a Bodhisattva that comes to us and says
can you love this resistance
because
pettiness is a gift for us to take care of
wholeheartedly, lovingly
without attaching to it
and greatness
is also a gift, of course
which comes to us to see if we can love it
without attaching to it
so now it's probably
you know
what time is it?
it's like about 2 minutes
to 11
so now
Bodhisattvas vow
they promise
to live for the sake of all beings
and
and then
when they practice that vow
they notice resistance to it
and then they
bring that resistance forward
confess it and see how they feel about it
and then act again
and see if the next action can be
wholeheartedly for the welfare
of all beings
without dwelling in it
and again
and if they notice holding back and so on
and there's no end to this practice
this is the ongoing maintenance of the Buddha way
and there's no end of it until everybody
is living
for the welfare of everybody
and so
it's going to be a long time before everybody is living for the welfare of everybody
and some of our favorite people
don't seem to even be ready to consider
living
for the welfare of everybody
like my grandsons
one of my grandsons is still
not willing to live for the welfare of George Bush
he's still harping on George Bush's
administration
and I don't exactly tell him
you should love George Bush
with your whole heart
but I sort of do tell him that
but not to get him to do it
and actually I don't tell him that
but I do have some response
when he doesn't want to
live for the welfare of past presidents
some past presidents
so my job with him is
this person who's resisting this bodhisattva practice
who has resistance to it
he doesn't yet think he owns the bodhisattva practice
he thinks he owns me
but he doesn't think he owns the bodhisattva practice
he more like has resistance to it
in the form of
holding back from caring for all beings
so my job with him is easy to love him
in his resistance
in his pettiness
in his small mindedness
easy to love him
easy to be patient with him most of the time
easy to be generous with him
easy to be gentle with him
the hard part with him is not abiding in him
that's really hard
and so because all the love comes so
so easily
it's hard to find a place
where there's no attachment to him
no dwelling in him
so there's a lot
and it comes easily
but it's a little off
it's a little incomplete
because there's this fleeting dwelling
here and there
and I really enjoy catching myself at it
and he enjoys catching me at it too
so I've told you the story about
one time I was behaving in a way he didn't like
and he turned to me and said
after he recovered from his hatred towards me
he said, if a Buddhist master saw the way you're acting
they would fire you
but then after a while he forgave me
and his little hand reached up for mine
and we were walking together again down the path
and now just recently, just a short time ago
he's starting to ask me questions about
our wonderful teacher
Suzuki Roshi
he's starting to ask me about how he was
and who his students were
and who was and wasn't his students
he's starting to show interest
in our dear teacher and his teaching and his students
and of course it's easy for me to love that
and welcome that
but it's hard not to dwell in it
ooh, so lovely
little guy, little guy getting interested in Zen
oh how cute
very difficult for me not to dwell in that
you can imagine, right?
so how do I receive it
you know, gratefully, and let it go
thank you and give it away
and not just for me
to protect me from dwelling
and the pain of the dwelling
but for the grandfather to show the grandson
how to accept such a precious gift
and not hold on to it
and give it back to the universe
it's very difficult, I really enjoy this challenge
and I think we, I hope
you all have some people
who you really can love
and love so much that you can find a place of dwelling
and be kind to the dwelling
and then you're really getting to the
you're really getting to the heart
of the Bodhisattva practice
you're getting close to perfect wisdom
and your love supports you to get close to perfect wisdom
and your perfect wisdom, that's coming close
is helping you perfect your love
thank you very much for listening
to this
may our intention
equally extend
to every being
and place
with truth