Yesterday I was talking to someone and she said that the last time she and I talked, she had told me that her main concern in life was unconditional love. in that previous conversation she was intending to contemplate that aspiration. And yesterday she told me she was having a lot of trouble with that, particularly when she was feeling frustrated when she wasn't able to, she felt she couldn't express herself or she felt like that she felt that she wasn't getting unconditional love.

[01:03]

So I asked her, did you mean that you wish to love unconditionally and you wish to be loved unconditionally? And she said, yes. And then she said, but then actually in that previous conversation she said, well how could I, besides just contemplating unconditional love, how could I meditate on it in some other ways? And I suggested to her that she meditate on giving, the practice of giving. And she said that when she thought about how her inability to feel love for someone, when she thought of that as a gift, and when she considered other people's apparent inability to love her, or relating to her in a way that she couldn't see as love, she still saw it as a gift.

[02:05]

And as she meditated on this gift-giving, she started to open up to that perhaps there was this love going on. that she previously couldn't see or couldn't understand. And if I think about, you know, what originally attracted me to Zen, it was stories about Zen students, Zen monks, who were able to love and see that they were loved maybe, although I couldn't exactly see how they saw that they were loved, but I more saw how they could love under various unusual circumstances or under conditions which we ordinarily would be challenged to love, like being insulted or being robbed.

[03:08]

So to see somebody who can act lovingly while being robbed, or act lovingly while being insulted. I thought that was, I wanted to be that way. To see somebody act lovingly when they're treated with respect and kindness, that's, of course, I like that too, but to see somebody come back with love, and also not love and necessarily some, I don't know, some set idea of what love would look like, but somehow to be able to see that the person was responding with love, like, you know, you insult them, it isn't necessarily, they might say, when you insult them, they might say, oh, thank you so much, that was so kind of you. But then, of course, they might get punched for that. So they might just say, which is the story I heard when the guy was assaulted.

[04:13]

And not just assaulted, but strongly criticized unjustly for something he didn't do. He just said, I see. Okay. Later, when it was discovered that he was not guilty of this crime, the people who accused him came back and praised him greatly, not only for not committing the crime, but for his response to their false accusations and their tremendous insults, he also said, oh, okay, not a real big deal, but quite different from the way we usually would respond to excessive attack and excessive or great praise. I want it to be that way. In other words, love under all conditions. I still want to discover how there is love.

[05:22]

Not exactly how I can love. Yeah, sort of like that actually, how I can love. How I am loved no matter what people no matter how people relate to me, to be able to see that it's love. And also, how I'm relating, to see how I'm relating is love. I want to see that. I want to awaken to that. And I want that to be enacted. And I thought of this song, this Carole King song. You know, guess which one I'm going to think of? Huh? That's a good one, too, yeah. Winter, spring, summer, or fall. That one, yeah, that's a good one.

[06:23]

The one I thought of was, Only love is real, everything else is illusion. So what else? You know, there's love. That's real. And then what's the other stuff? It's illusion. So what are some examples of other stuff? I don't know. Well, it seems like war and violence are kind of, they're kind of like, they don't look like love. So what doesn't look like love, I'm, suggesting we contemplate what doesn't look like love, how that's an illusion. But that doesn't mean that the illusion like war and violence and cruelty, it doesn't mean those illusions don't exist. The illusion of not love does exist.

[07:25]

And so then how do we have a chance of basically not believing that war is something other than love manifesting? or how not to be fooled by our vision of war and violence. So there's a danger here that I'm suggesting in suggesting that everything but love is an illusion that I wouldn't feel compassion for situations of violence and cruelty.

[08:48]

But actually what I'm hoping to discover is the ability to see compassion operating in all situations and then to enact compassion in situations which appear to be war or appear to be violence or appear to be cruelty rather than I don't know what in relationship to violence and cruelty. Well, the usual thing would be for me to believe that my cognition or my perception or my awareness of cruelty, the thing I see there, is actually really the way it is. So I'd suggest as an approach to this is the approach, and I'm trying to find an approach to awaken to the love that's going on.

[10:28]

And one way to awaken to the love that's going on is to not be fooled by the appearance of what's going on as external. So I'm not suggesting that we deny the conventional existence of chairs and trees and war. They do exist conventionally. But even in their conventional existence they don't exist externally. I suggest that if a person you love, if you see them existing externally, then you feel love, and that's nice.

[11:35]

Somehow you're awakened to love in that case, you're awakened to compassion. I have no problem with that, really. A little bit of a problem, which you'll maybe see later, but when you see someone who you don't feel love for or you don't think is loving you, then the door to see the love in that situation opens when you start to understand that this person or this situation is not actually external. this conventionally existing person or situation is not external, realizing that opens the door to see love manifesting in this relationship, which previously you couldn't see it. Once you see it, that vision, I should say, can aid the situation to more fully realize for the other participants that love is going on That's the conventional way things exist.

[12:49]

Things don't exist ultimately because if we do a deep and precise, take a deep and precise look at things, we actually will not find them to be existent. When we look at war, when we see war or violence or trees or people, we find out that what we're actually seeing his words and concepts projected on what's going on. Because we are conditioned to project upon what's going on so that we can grasp what's going on. So I'm not suggesting that we create a state of consciousness where we don't project on the world anymore, that we make the world an ungraspable field, but rather that the world is an ungraspable field that we are projecting on.

[14:06]

And what I'm suggesting is if we can not be fooled anymore by our projections, that our projections on what? On an inconceivable field. A field that actually cannot be grasped in the way it is, but only grasped by our ideas. A pulsating, energetic, interdependent field which is our life. In which wars happen. But again, wars happen dependent on our projections. And because of our projections, wars do happen. But if we believe our projections upon the field of our interactions, then we don't see love all the time.

[15:09]

We see it occasionally, or maybe a lot. But how about seeing it all the time? And how about seeing it all the time? How about seeing that everybody is actually struggling to express love, which is their true nature. And by I mean love, I mean that you all are assisting me and I am assisting you all. And that's always the way we are. It's a question of waking up to that. But I can't wake up to that if I hold to my images and words about you and about our situation. If I hold to them and believe them, that obstructs the vision of how we're working in a compassionate way. The Buddha's cognition I propose to you and to me

[16:12]

is a vision of what's going on which is free of these projections upon what's going on. But it's not that the Buddha's mind is free of the projections in the sense that there's no projections, but the Buddha's mind is not fooled, the enlightened mind is not fooled by the projections. Unenlightened people project, and they project by habit, by karmic predisposition, and they're fooled by it. Awakened cognition can also project, but it projects out of compassion as a creative act, not by compulsion and obsession. it projects so they can talk to people about what things look like when you talk about them.

[17:17]

But it's not by compulsion, it's by compassion. They're not fooled. They simultaneously see love in the world where they can see other people would call it hate, and they would call it hate too. but they would know that it's not hate beyond the word hate. It's actually love where we put the word hate on love. The enlightened cognition isn't attached to what's passing and isn't seeking what's coming. And I told a story a while ago about a dream I had, a story about a dream, a dream about a dream that I had about my... I was in Los Angeles in this dream and I was in some crowded situation and my grandson, I was with my grandson and I looked away and I looked back and he was gone.

[18:27]

And I didn't think he evaporated. I thought someone, some human, I thought, took him away. And someone asked me just today, they said, in that dream, how did you feel? Did you just say, well, he's gone? And I said, no, I felt terrible because I didn't think he just evaporated. I thought someone took him. And I thought he was potentially in a situation where he was going to be terribly frightened and terrorized to be taken away by people he didn't know. And who knows what else? I felt terrible about that. So the Buddha's cognition lets things come and go, but also if any comings and goings are the slightest bit painful to beings, the Buddha feels that pain. Would it be the case if I was told by all good accounts and it looked to me like my grandson was being taken into a very supportive and compassionate environment where he was very comfortable and where he was going to be cared for and educated well.

[19:57]

But he would be going from me and I would never be able to see him again. then would I aspire to a state of mind which would be happy for him and let him go. And yes, I do. I would still want to be with him if I could, but if I couldn't and he was well, I would want him to be well. Or to make another example, if you knew that your grandchild being with you somehow would be unhappy, but being away from you would be happy, Perhaps you would wish them to be away from you if they had a better, if they would be happier. And that's what I would aspire to, is I want him to be where he's happy even if I don't get to see him. In that sense, we just let things go. We aspire to that anyway. I look at you and my mind very, you know, handily gathers you, gathers all of you and gathers each of you into a graspable version of you.

[21:42]

That's been going on for quite a while with me And I think it will probably continue, that I will continue to respond to you and other beings and the environment by projecting an image upon you and ideas and words upon you so that I can gather you, grasp you, know you through that way. What I want to do is I don't want to be fooled by the you that I think you are. I don't want to be fooled by what I think you are. I don't want to be fooled by that. Sometimes I really intensely don't want to. I've told this story many times. I was a Tatar one time talking to someone, and I said to her, out loud I said, maybe it wasn't very kind, but I was in a desperate situation, so I said to her, I don't believe what I'm thinking you are.

[22:54]

I don't believe what I'm thinking about you. I don't believe, I don't want to believe, I don't believe what I'm thinking about you. I had to say it out loud somehow to keep myself from believing that she was what I thought she was. because I could see how dangerous it would be if I actually believed she was what I thought she was. Sometimes I can't see. Sometimes I can't see how dangerous it is for me to believe what I think you are, for me to believe my image of you and my idea of you and my words about you. Sometimes I can't see how dangerous it is, but I think it is dangerous Once again, on the other side, if I don't believe my idea of you, then I start to open to knowing you beyond my ideas of you. Like I see someone, you know, who is, I don't know what, they seem to be trying to avoid me.

[24:01]

You know, they're looking the other way when they see me or something. They seem to not be happy with me. They seem to hate me or whatever. That's what it looks like to me. That's how I'm grasping this person. But how can I impartially and fully know this person? To some extent by thinking, well maybe this person is a great bodhisattva who is just here to test me, to encourage me to get over my idea about him. That's not a bad meditation. I think it's a good meditation, actually. But even those who are acting very nicely to you, how about that they're a bodhisattva too, here to test you to see if you believe your idea that they're being nice to you.

[25:13]

In some ways it's even harder. There's not so much pressure to get over the idea that someone's being very kind to you, someone's being extremely helpful to you. Why get over that idea? Why not be fooled by that idea? It's such a pleasant idea. It's such a wonderful idea. It's such an auspicious and fortunate idea. So, I want, actually, everyone, I want everyone to be kind to me. Yes. But another way to put it is, everyone is kind to me and I want to wake up to that. But again, the way you're being kind to me is not my idea of how you're being kind to me. It's the way you're actually being with me, is kindness, is love, is compassion.

[26:22]

That's the way you're actually being with me. And when I think you're being kind, usually I have some idea of how you're being kind to me. And when I think you're not being kind to me, then that's what I'm thinking too. But actually at that moment, you are actually being kind to me. I want to wake up to that. So I'm telling you, on one side I'm telling you that's the way we really are, and I'm also saying, well, but I don't really see that. But I want to wake up to that. And one of the key factors is that the kind people I meet and the kind trees I meet and the kind animals I meet are not external to me.

[27:29]

But I think they are. So usually the sense of externality comes with all the projections of kindness And the cruel people I meet, the people I think are cruel or not compassionate to me, they also come with that externality. The peaceful situations, the violent situations, they both come with a sense of they're out there external to me, to my awareness. So running through all these images is a sense that they're out there, that the things that I have images of are out there separate from me. And that's another image, the image of externality. You exist, but the externality of you does not. So I wish to realize that externality is an illusion and I wish to not be fooled by externality, by the appearance of externality, which comes along with all my other images of each person I meet.

[28:46]

And not only is there no externality of you to me and me to you, but of course I also see there's no externality between you, between each of you. And there's no externality of real and unreal. To take one side or the other, is extreme. If I may share with you that right now I'm having an experience of gathering the group and each person, not that you're all the same, but gathering each person into a person

[30:57]

who seems to be separate from the other people, and gathering all the separate people into a huge mass of many people, many separate people. And I'm also gathering your feelings into some particular feeling. My mind is doing that. And I'm trying to relax with that. I'm trying not to be fooled by how I see you now. But the way I see you now is that you look like, many of you, although as I'm talking to you, your facial expression is changing, you look like you didn't have a very good time during this talk.

[32:03]

Until that moment. You look like it was kind of difficult and depressing. And one person is saying, no. But anyway, I'm just saying this is an example of how you looked before I said what I just said, which then now you look happy. And so you also look like you'd like me to stop now while you're happy. And then the fact that you laugh sounds like, yeah, they really like that idea. So in a way I feel like I should stop quite soon. Why, while, what do you call it? Stop while you're ahead? Stop while they're happy? Leave while they're happy? And I don't really have another part that says, no, stay until they get unhappy again. I don't really have that side. But I just want to tell you that my mind does sort of evaluate your condition and does make images about how you are.

[33:16]

And then I'm struggling with my version of who you are. I'm struggling with not believing who I think you are. so that the door of our actual mutual loving relationship, the door to that will open if I stop being caught by my impression of how you feel that we are together. And I'm actually trying to relax and let go of, what do you call it, my enchantment with my idea that you're not happy, or my enchantment. I can enchant myself with the idea that you're not happy. My mind can enchant me, or it can enchant this being with its own sense of what's going on.

[34:17]

And I'm struggling to not be caught by my own mind, by my own cognitive projections. But it's hard. And it's hard when the projection is that you're unhappy, and it's hard also to let go of the projection when you are happy. Either way, there's a strong tendency to want to be able to grasp what's going on here. I'm threatened, I'm at risk of believing what I think is going on here today. but I feel some, you know, some happiness that I know I'm at risk, that I know I have this tendency to want to be able to grasp what's happening between me and the whole group and between me and each of you.

[35:23]

And I share with you my vow to meditate on this risk in each meeting, the risk that I will believe, the way my mind gathers you, who are not a gathered thing, to gather you in interdependent event, which depends on the whole universe to make you, but I gather you into a nice little package so that I can grasp you and know you by my grasping consciousness, which I'm so habituated to. So that's probably enough. Right? And I don't have a song about this, I'm sorry. But maybe somebody else does. Can you ask me a question?

[36:28]

Yes, you may. So if you're so independent on how I'm so what? Independent on how people... You say independent or dependent? Independent. If I'm independent, okay. I don't say I'm independent. But anyway, you thought I said I was independent? Yes. My question is, do you try to make them happy? Do I try to make people happy? Not so much. I want everybody to be happy. I want you to be happy, but I don't exactly try to make you happy. I just want you to be happy. I try to appreciate you. My feeling is that if I can appreciate you as something that's not just my idea of you, so now right now I have this idea of you, right? If I cannot be fooled by my idea of you, I think that that will contribute to your happiness. And I want to contribute to your happiness, therefore I'm working to not be caught by my idea of you.

[37:38]

So right now I just happen to have, just by coincidence, kind of a pleasant idea about you. But I'm trying not to believe that. What, you're more confused? But we have a question and answer session coming up, which you probably don't want to come to now. But anyways... That's another example of an idea I have. So I have this idea that she doesn't want to come to question and answer because she just asked a question and then she got more confused. So I gather her together into, well, since she feels more confused, I'm going to make her into a person who doesn't want to feel more confused so she can avoid the question and answer session. This is my doing to her. She might actually feel like, oh, I'm just dying to come to question and answer so I can get more confused. Who knows who she is? You know, who knows who she is? She doesn't know any better than we do. She has her ideas. I have my ideas.

[38:39]

But your ideas and my ideas of who you are, I say, it's not that they're wrong. It's just don't be fooled by them. And I want you to be happy. I really do. But I'm not trying to make you happy. I'm trying to not be fooled by who I think you are because if I am not fooled by who you think you are, I'm suggesting I will see our happy relationship, our loving relationship. I will see it. And if I see it, it helps you see it. Or the other possibility is if I open to you by giving up my idea of you, so I come to meet you and I say, okay, I'll put my idea over here on the table and try to meet you without believing my projection on you. But I can't put my idea over on the table, because then I won't be able to see you anymore. So I put my idea on you, then I grasp you, and then I have to sort of say, who is she really?

[39:45]

And that way of being with you, I think, will help you be the same way with me and everybody else. And there I think we find our compassionate, our mutual compassionate relationship under all circumstances. That's my idea, which I'm trying also to let go of. So thank you very much. Yes? Well, the thing is, I think most of the people want to leave. So this is my idea. But we're going to have a question and answer session in a little while. You're welcome to come. It's right here. So it'll be a little while. We'll have a question and answer. You can come and ask questions. But some people have to go do other things. So we'll let them go. Okay? Thank you. May our intention equally fend to every place we go to.

[40:50]

Let's begin the song with this. Let's begin the song with this. Let's begin the song with this. I wanted to address the idea of war as an idea when it's so omnipresent. Yes, right. You know, on this side of the world, we have a certain privilege, of course, where it's really not in our face, and yet I feel there's so much anger and violence inside of me. I've never been in a violent altercation in my life. And yes, there's so much violent imagery inside of me that if it were to be put on a TV screen, for example, I'd be put behind bars.

[42:01]

And it's with me all the time, side by side, with feelings of compassion and love, reconciling the two. They all can feel at odds with one another. It's almost like the violence in the world has intruded itself upon me. So when you throw out the image of sort of like a war, or let's say a weapon next to a tree, and I try to regard the book as an idea, well, one seems very benign compared to the others, which could indeed take my life or cause some sort of harm. So how do, in this world, where the media brings those images and those feelings so close to us that we contain them and, you know, feel almost that we're capable of perpetrating them ourselves, how do we regard it as something that's just an idea? You know, we're not concrete. It's not that the thing is just an idea. You're not just an idea. I'm not saying you're just an idea. I'm saying that you are not external to me.

[43:07]

That's one of the first things I would say. You're not external to me. But I have the idea that you're external to me. Now the idea of you being external is the idea of something that doesn't exist at all. You exist. but your externality doesn't exist at all. You exist conventionally for me, and I exist conventionally for me. But the separation between us doesn't even exist conventionally. It doesn't exist at all. If I look deeply, I would never be able to really find such a thing as you. Or war. I wouldn't be able to ultimately find it. or find you. But conventionally I can find you, and conventionally I can find war.

[44:09]

Or I should say, if I don't look too carefully, I'll find you. But I'll never find our separation. That doesn't exist at all. So what I'm proposing is, I'm proposing that if I were able to understand and never be fooled, by the appearance of you being separate from me, that I would see how you and I are working in a loving way. But I wouldn't see it as my idea of us working in a loving way. I would see the actuality of how we're working lovingly. Even if the image, even if you, I don't know, for some reason, if you or somebody manifested a violent aspect, you know, you appeared to be violent to me. And I could see that, a violent appearance. I'm suggesting that if I could not be fooled, number one, by that image, number two, but even more basically by the sense that you're external to me, I would be able to see how we're working together cooperatively in a loving way while you're manifesting violently.

[45:26]

You know, and without and your violence would be just as real as you as a person. Namely, it would be conventionally real. Convention exists. But if I believe, number one, that that exists more than conventionally, and number two, if I believe that even conventionally our separation exists, then by believing that, by holding to that, I close my eyes to our actual, splendid, inconceivably wonderful loving relationship. Yes. No, it's not that things are our projections. It's that we are predisposed to project upon things. I can project on you all day long, but I never, never is my projection upon you, you. You're not my projections. However, my projections affect you, of course.

[46:31]

My projection is part of what I give to you. If you project upon me that I'm a good person, that's a gift to me. That's part of what makes me alive. If you project upon me that I'm a hypocrite, that I'm dishonest, those are gifts to me. So your projections are part of what create me. But if you believe your projections upon me, you will not see how we're working together. But I'm not saying, I don't agree that I'm just your projection. You can stop projecting on me, I'm still alive for a little while. And similarly, you have your life, you have a lot of life that's connected to my projection. My projections are, all of our projections are part of what creates you. But none of our projections are you. and none of my projections upon any of you are you, even though my projections influence and contribute to your life. If I don't believe my projections about you as being you, then by giving up, by that disbelief, by that refutation of my cherished, lovely ideas about the world, that giving up opens the door to this, an inconceivable relationship, a relationship that is more basic

[47:53]

and harmonious than anything we can imagine. So I'm not saying we should stop imagining. I'm saying let's go ahead and be bees with imaginations. Let's do that with each other because that's our human way. But let's learn to not be fooled. Then we'll see something truly wonderful even if someone's manifesting in a way that most people would say is violent. Or even an enlightened person would say, yes, I can see their manifesting as violent, but I can also see that we're working together in this way, and I love this person, and I can see this person, their violence is their way of trying to get in touch with me. Like I was talking to somebody recently, one of our students grew up in Czechoslovakia, and I asked her, did she skate there? You know, because they have a really good hockey team there, right? So they do skate a lot in Czechoslovakia. It's one of their big sports. Even it's part of their high school curriculum. She said the girls skate and the boys often are going around shooting pucks, hockey pucks at their feet.

[49:00]

You know? And my wife was sitting there and she said, They're the same all over the world. And this other woman says, yeah, it's kind of like they're trying to relate, you know, but they won't allow, the other boys won't allow one of the boys to come over and be nice to the girls, but they will let them shoot pocky pucks at the girls. So it's like the only way they dare to relate is to like, in this kind of violent way. But they're trying to relate, seeing how that's really what we're up to here. is that we're trying to realize our harmonious, compassionate relationship. That's what the Buddha sees. But the Buddha can't see it either if the Buddha would hold to her ideas, her images of things. So we have to train our minds to recognize our projections and be warned against believing them, and be warned against our narcissistic tendency to grab our idea of who people are.

[50:04]

That's what I'm suggesting. Now, what do you say? I'll just respond quickly because I want to give other people time to speak, of course. But I think my concern is the projections of the violent world on you. It's less what I feel. I was sort of positing myself as a container. And the world feels, in the last four or five years since 9-11, the world feels very, very small in a way that I was completely I agree. Yeah, and on top of Mount Tam, lovely young girls are raped by confused young men. Right here, right up there. It happens. This is not exactly optimistic, but my sense is that this violence is the world's way to bring the Islamic world together with the Christian world and the Jewish world.

[51:25]

This is the way these different peoples and these different religions are struggling for harmony. And it's a violent struggle. But I see it as this is, you know, and we in America are kind of like, oh yeah, Islam over there, you know. Yeah, there's some, what do you call it? There's some mosque in America. But most of Islam is way over there and we don't have to deal with it. And now Islam is saying, I hear Islam say, deal with us, respect us, love us. But we're actually saying, we hate you. We want to destroy you. You're the evil one. This is their way of saying, please, love us. Just like a teenager says to their parents, you know, I hate you. I want to destroy you. This is their way of saying, I love you. Please find a harmonious relationship with me somehow where you're not just overpowering me and disrespecting me. Don't take me for granted.

[52:28]

Find out who I really am, please. I want that, and I want to find out who you are. But the only way I know how to do this is to shoot hockey pucks at you, to say the least. So I feel like the world is coming closer to you and to me, and I think it's pressing us, pressing us, pressing us to become disabused of our narrow view of what's going on in this world. We will continue to have a narrow view. But if we don't believe it, there's a possibility of realizing peace and harmony with those who we have narrow views of. That's my vision. That's my attempt. And I'm not too good at it. Peter, did you want to bring your question up? I don't want to sound like the Zen Grinch, but whenever I hear love, profit, and spiritual discourse, my skin starts to crawl.

[53:42]

When I read the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara says, therefore in form, I mean in emptiness, no form, no feelings, no perceptions, no impulses, no consciousness. It doesn't mention love. And so, since I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm trying to come to an understanding of love which is bigger than like, which is bigger than wanting to be with, because in my own meditations where I come to If this field of pregnant energy that can become anything is kind of the ground, and if everything is, as Suzuki Roshi said, postcards from emptiness, the best thing that I can think to do is to allow each postcard to be fully what it is.

[54:45]

to accept that it's not neither here nor out there, but just to let it be and fulfill its evolutionary destiny. It doesn't seem requisite on me to like it or to have a warm and feeling about it like I do about my granddaughter. And so I'm at the question involved in this little speech is to ask you to embroider what you mean by love, so that I can try to square it with what I know of grand reality. Could you hear what he said? Yeah. A while ago, somehow I found myself giving a talk here, and I noticed I was talking about love, and I stopped and realized I didn't know what love was. But I happened to be talking about it. But I thought, well, I don't have to know what it is to talk about it. So today I was talking about it too, but I don't know what it is.

[55:52]

And I think your meditation of letting everything in this field be itself, that that way of being with things, I would be tempted to say that that was love. But I won't. I would say that that way of being with things would open the door to love. which is not my idea of love. So you say love doesn't have to be like or, you know, whatever else. Yeah, yeah. Love doesn't have to be like warm, cuddly. Also love doesn't have to be not warm and not cuddly. I would say love in all things, what they actually are, is that they're innocent of any idea we have about them. but your way of meditating on your relationship with all things, I hesitate to say, well, that's love. Because then that would be my idea, your idea of love. Don't put it in that wonderful category, that wonderful picture either.

[56:56]

It's even beyond that beautiful picture you drew of how you relate to things. But I think if you practice relating to things that way, if you dare to live that way with people, then I think that's good. But one of the best things about it is I think that will open the door to the love which is beyond anybody's idea, including Avalokiteshvara's idea of what love is, a love that can't be grasped. Yes ma'am, what's your name? Renata. Renata. And what's your name, young man? Ken. Young man. He's a young man. Yes? Young lady? My questions have changed after doing the talk. I still have a couple of questions about what we're talking about.

[58:00]

One was related to the last question where this man asked about love, because I'm wondering if you've seen a lot of compassion in similar ways when you say everything is eternal. I'm using love as a synonym for compassion. But shifting to compassion, I still don't want my ideas of compassion to get in the way of realizing compassion. I guess maybe that answers another question. I'm not sure. My other question is when you speak of the external and that not really existing in a sense that if we go deep... Externality doesn't exist. Right.

[59:01]

If we go deeply, well, everything's great. Isn't that When you start to really take that in, is it that then, because everything's related, and because we are all kind of one, that then it's that that's the compassion, rather than any of the other things we've experienced? Yeah. Yeah, the way we're actually related is compassion. However, the way we're related is beyond any idea of how we're related. That's the emptiness of compassion. And to make that into a ground, you've got to be careful that you don't make that relationship into something that you can grasp.

[60:07]

Or just realize that as soon as you're talking about how we're related, we do project an image onto that we're related. We have some idea of related. Okay? Then we have to be not fooled about the fact that we're all related, fooled by the image or idea of us being related. Otherwise we just turn that into another thing, which is external to not related. My initial question was why love and compassion was the thing that was true rather than the other experiences we have. But I guess now my question is more that, and I don't know if it's because we're all related, I think that's where compassion comes from, is some sense that we're related.

[61:20]

But when compassion first comes, like I know a lot of people who really do feel compassionate towards a lot of people. I know a lot of people who feel compassion towards a lot of people. But many of those people still think, are still fooled by the appearance of these people who they feel compassion for as being separate from them. Therefore, if I feel compassion towards you and I think you're separate from me, even though I still feel compassion for you and I'm devoted to you, in working, in expressing my devotion to you, I will become exhausted. And eventually, if there's enough people like you that I'm devoted to, I will like retire from my compassion work. Because I'm destroying my energy by believing that the people I'm helping are external to me. And if you're working to help people that you basically have the idea you have a nice relationship with,

[62:26]

and you see them as external, you'll become exhausted. If you're working with people that you think have violence expressing itself through them, and you think they're external, you'll become exhausted there too. You'll probably say, yeah, I can understand how working with violent people would be exhausting. But even working with non-violent people can be exhausting if I see them as external. So there can be what you might call somewhat defiled or we sometimes say sentimental compassion, which is a compassion where you love people but you think they're out there separate from you. it's still a positive emotion and it's a seed for the growing into this full-scale unhindered compassion, which is compassion not only where you feel you care for everybody, but you see how actually everybody's working together. You see that. You see how people are working with you no matter what they're doing.

[63:31]

Because you do not any longer believe your idea of compassion, as being this, this, or this. You don't believe the idea that people are separate from you. You don't believe any of your conceptual projections. So the people who are devoted to the welfare of others, the bodhisattvas, they have to learn this meditation called meditation on emptiness, which means they have to learn that their ideas of things are never in the things. But it doesn't mean there's no things. It just means your idea of things is not in them. that purifies your compassion. But you can feel lots of compassion before that. I mean, you could be willing to give your life up for somebody in this room, which is certainly compassionate of you, for their welfare. But you still could think that they're separate from you. And you might get through that, giving up your life for that person, and feel, that was nice, I'm happy I did that. But then if you do it for one person after another with that attitude, pretty soon you say, I quit.

[64:37]

I don't want to do this anymore. Because the attitude is an attitude which has this false view of separateness and externality in it, which drains your energy. through that belief. So we purify the compassion by meditating on emptiness or suchness. And suchness and emptiness are that there's no substantial separation between us. There's only an apparent separation. And when you see that there's no separation, then you don't really see things anymore. You're just with things without seeing them out there. But we're not used to that. So we have to get ready for it. It takes a lot of training to be able to tolerate dealing with people without packaging them. In the meantime, let's listen to the teaching that objects are not out there separate from us. Cultivate that. Think about that until we more and more believe it.

[65:39]

and less and less believe that we're separate. And then finally, someday, we will actually see it with a valid, direct, irrefutable cognition. And then our compassion will be purified. Our love will be purified. Yes? What's your name? Paul. I'm... Following the same line of questioning, I guess. So I understand the non-attachment part, I think, and the saying, it's not this. But I'm grappling with what you mean when you say more or less that love or unconditional love is what is actually there. So if our ideas of other things are not true, we can't grasp and hold on to them, if we give them up, why is there love there rather than, let's say, nothing?

[66:51]

Let's say we realize we're all connected, we're part of the same thing, but is it true that we then love that one thing, maybe we feel a difference or dislike. And then I wonder if when you say love, if that's just the same as acceptance and non-judgment, or if it means something else in a sense. I heard many questions there, which is fine. I hope you can remember them because I don't know if I remembered them all, but I heard several different facets, all of which were quite interesting. Thank you. If you feel compassion and you wish to

[67:57]

feel it more, like if you feel compassion sometimes in some situations, and you see other people being compassionate sometimes in some situations, I would say that's kind of the seed. If you want to see that more and have that more fully realized, then what I'm talking about is a meditation which will promote the exhaustive realization of your wish for people to be free and happy, your wish to be kind to people, and your wish to realize them being kind to you and them being kind to each other. If you want to do that, if you want that to be realized, I should say, not that you would do it, but if you want to join in that project with beings, then I'm suggesting a meditation which I think might be helpful to that. That's the basic project that I'm talking about. Does that make sense? Okay. So, yes?

[69:00]

Let me go on. So that's the basic project. Then, in order to realize that, there is a phase of going through. You said something like, if you gave up your ideas, I think maybe you said something like this, if you would give up your ideas about what's going on, Like if you see some people being nice to each other, I mean, you see some people and you think, oh, they're being nice to each other. You see some people over here and you think, they're not being very nice to each other. If you give up your ideas in both cases, you're saying, well, maybe you'd have nothing then. Actually, that's sort of what Peter was bringing up too. There's a phase that you go through where there is this kind of danger or possibility that you won't see anything for a moment. that when you give up your ideas of things, it'll look like nothing. Because what you're used to seeing as things, the way you usually see things is you see them as packaged by your mental projections. So if you would give up your mental projections or look at your mental projections and find out that they really don't apply to anything,

[70:09]

My mental projections of you are about you, so they're based on you, but they don't apply to you. If I would see that, you say, maybe, wouldn't I just have nothing then? And for a moment, by what I usually call having something, I might have nothing. In other words, in this vision of the way things are, of the insubstantiality of our separation, which also in the insubstantiality of our separation means I give up the image of you as being separate, in that emptiness of our separation, there's no Paul. So for a moment there, I don't have anything. So you would, in a sense, not be able to grasp anything. And the danger is you would change not being able to grasp things into nothing. Like if you can't grasp rib, well then there's nothing. Rather than, well now I just happen to meet the ungraspable rib. And he's like, what can I say? I can't say anything. I can say whatever I want, but actually I don't really have a rib anymore.

[71:15]

Where is the compassion? When you take away, when you can live with people without making them into something. And you can live with people where they're kind of like they're not something. And you can tolerate that. You open your Dharma eye to the actual way that everybody is supporting you and you are supporting everybody. How everybody is your dearest child and you're everybody's dearest child. You can see that then beyond your idea of what I just said. You actually open your body and mind to a cognition, to an awareness of your actual relationship, which is not another packageable thing. And you can talk about it, but you realize those words aren't reaching it. But you still can speak from there. And you can say, you know, and speak in such a way that you demonstrate that you understand that you have a loving relationship with people. That's the proposal.

[72:23]

But if we don't give up, if we keep holding on to our ideas of each other, that blocks us realizing the way we are with each other, which is beyond our ideas of each other. But beyond our ideas doesn't mean our ideas aren't contributing to the situation. It's just that our ideas don't grasp the situation. And once again, if you give up the ideas by which you grasp me, it's like you don't have me anymore. what you have is our relationship where there's not a me separate from you, which you can't grasp. You can't grasp our non-separation. But that's who you are. You are our non-separation. You are the way I'm supporting you and you're supporting me. That's the way I suggest we actually are. But I'm saying that, but the images that I have and you have while I'm saying that, I'm not saying that that's the way we are. I'm saying we're beyond that. Okay?

[73:25]

I don't know who's next. A lot of hands. She's been for, yes? I find myself playing all kinds of mind games with this, and I understand projections. And if I'm looking at big concepts like George Bush and his team, and I can project evil on them, that makes me feel bad. I can project confusion on them, and that can make me feel not as bad. And then I see that we're all coming from source energy, so I can see my own evil and my own confusion. And I can have compassion for that. But that's all going on in my mind, but what action do I take? That's why my mind gets so confused that I don't find a place from where to act. I guess that's the question, how to translate that into meaningful action. Well, I thought what you said was quite good. And so, like, you're getting information about, for example, you're getting information about George Bush,

[74:29]

And based on the information you're getting about George Bush, you're creating images of how he's doing. And the images you have are that things are not going well, I guess. You feel he's not being skillful and not being compassionate and so on. Given the information, that's the image you're coming up with. Okay? Now, based on that, you can take various actions, but I'm suggesting And also, if you thought he was doing well, based on the information you got, you thought he was doing well, that would be also your idea of how he was doing. And I'm suggesting that if you want to be compassionate towards him and help him to realize his best potential and help all people working with them, if you want to help them promote peace in this world, I'm suggesting that you will be more able to do that if you can become free of your ideas that they're doing well or not doing well, or what would be doing well or what would not be doing well. I'm not saying throw those ideas out.

[75:32]

I'm saying realize that those ideas are not about something that's external to you. And you seem to actually sense that. But I can also sense that, that this stuff is not so external and something is about your mind. And when you're in that place where you're not fooled by your own thinking, then I think you're going to be more, then you're going to act in a more helpful way, a more completely helpful way. Because you're free of your own ideas. And you can interact then with people who really, who have different ideas. And because you're free of your ideas and also free of your ideas of their ideas, you can demonstrate flexibility and energy and patience and generosity, which will have an effect in the situation along the lines of peace and harmony. But if I'm caught by my ideas of you, and I'm caught by my ideas of your ideas of me, and I'm caught by my ideas of what's good, then I would say that my compassion in the form of giving

[76:38]

patience, precepts, concentration and effort to work for peace, all those things will be undermined by me being caught and blinded by believing my own image of things as being what's going on. The more I'm not caught by my image, the more the doors of a harmonious way of working things out opens to me. Even though it might open to someone who's holding onto her ideas, who would admit that she's holding onto her ideas. And I have an idea that she's holding on to her ideas too, maybe. But I might also see that actually while she's holding on to her ideas, there's somebody else there who's not holding on to her ideas and who's dancing with me all day long. I can see that too. So then I can like hang in there with her forever until she and I together become free of our ideas of each other. This is like an amazing attainment, but this is what I'm encouraging all of us to aspire to.

[77:40]

The full realization of our skillfulness with each other to realize peace and love beyond our ideas of peace and love. But not to realize war beyond our ideas of war. To realize peace beyond our ideas of peace and beyond our ideas of war. Because I even saw, I don't know if George Bush actually said this, but I saw this thing in the newspaper where George Bush says, when we're talking about war, what we're really talking about is peace. Well, it sounds like Zen, right? But not quite. It's close. When we're talking about war, we're talking about our ideas of war. And when we're talking about peace, we're talking about our ideas of peace. And we're talking about Islam, and we're talking about Saddam Hussein. We're really talking about our ideas of Saddam Hussein. And I want to become free of my ideas of Saddam Hussein. But I didn't hear him say that.

[78:42]

And I want him to say that. And I want to become free of my ideas about him. But not by tossing my ideas out the window. But realize there's various things that create the ideas. They're not by accident. How can I not be enchanted by my own ideas of you? Well, one of the main ways would be to start by realizing I am enchanted by my ideas of you. I do like to be able to grasp you and package you. I'm a normal human being that way. However, I also have heard a teaching which says, get over it. Don't fall for your own mind. And then your compassion, which is really where you're going to be happy, is when you're compassionate, of course. But not just when you're compassionate, but when you realize other people are compassionate to you. If I can become free of my ideas, the doors of that vision will open.

[79:44]

Yes? When you say to meditate on something such as the absence of externality, do you mean in sitting or do you mean contemplation in daily life? Both. And if you mean sitting, do you need specific direction and instruction from a teacher to get that meditation assigned to you, so to speak? Yes, that's best. Otherwise it could be quite confusing and disturbing. these meditations will work best if you have an ongoing practice of practicing tranquility. So that you're actually in a state of tranquility, then you'll be much more successful at actually meditating on these somewhat disturbing contemplations because they're they're initiating you into a really different way of seeing things. So it would be good to get instruction on how to do that. And this instruction probably would start with helping you. The first phase of instruction in developing meditation is usually to take a break from thinking about what's going on.

[80:56]

Just give up discursive thought for a while by various forms of tranquility. And then along with that and after that you meditate on the middle way, you know, on avoiding extremes and so on in terms of saying that what you think is true or false. More like just let go of what you think, let go of your images. But part of it is identifying what images you do have and how you do believe them and identifying the strong karmic impulse to make things graspable. So that's part of the meditation would be to notice that. But you usually don't start with that meditation. You start by taking care of yourself so you can stand that meditation. Because it's kind of nauseating to see what we're actually up to unless you're calm. to see how much we cling, you know, and believe our own idea of what's going on. To see our obsessive and compulsive attitude towards our images.

[81:58]

And not only that, but towards them means towards believing them and also toward generating new ones so we're constantly ready to like package the world so we can deal with it. And how difficult it is for us to relax with that and meet somebody without packaging them. But if you're already calm enough, you can dare to consider that possibility of meeting someone with an open hands, open heart, open eyes, open ears, open pores, and like, but no grasping. Yikes! Again, that could be almost like nothing. Does that make some sense? It's upsetting even when you describe it. Pardon me? What did you say? I mean, to do the meditation would be incredibly difficult. Even when you describe doing it, it's upsetting. Very good that you can sense that. So if you actually wanted to do it, your instructor might encourage you to do a tranquility meditation for quite a while first so that you feel kind of, okay, I feel kind of at ease and flexible now.

[83:05]

I'm ready to, like, get spun around by such instructions. That's right. Hey, Peter, Russ is here to get you. OK. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. Let me come back to what we were, what the Q&A sort of started with. I appreciate your commentary on the hockey puck. I can understand how someone experiencing adverse reaction to circumstances that are intended in a competitive way can, in fact, view that as compassion and as love. But when that adverse reaction comes from another place, from one clearly intended to hurt, damage, or eliminate one's existence, How do we view that as compassion or love? Basically the same.

[84:08]

I'm sorry that that's difficult. I know that if somebody's trying to hurt me or trying to hurt you, and I see that, I probably would be as horrified as the next person. Okay? Because I probably would have some idea, and since it's such a terrible idea, I probably would tense up and believe it. Okay? But I'm suggesting to you that if I really wanted to protect you, I would be more effective in protecting you if I wasn't caught by my idea that this person was going to hurt you. I would be more flexible and skillful in protecting you if I wasn't tensed around the idea that they're going to hurt you. Because if I have the idea they're going to hurt you, I have an idea of how they're going to hurt you. But actually they might try to hurt you in a different way. But I'm not ready for that because I have a fixed idea. or I have an idea of how they're going to hurt you, which I'm believing is how they're going to hurt you, and also what will be hurtful to you, because I'm caught in my vision of what's going on, I won't be able to get in there and join the cooperation of the situation where you and your attacker could both be liberated from this violence.

[85:21]

But I'm suggesting to you another world, a world where everything, everything, where this teacup and where this person and where this weapon, everything is engaged in Buddha activity. But if we can't see it, if we don't realize this, then there's suffering in the world. So if you take a mild example like boys shooting hockey pucks at girls, then it's easier maybe, you don't tense up so much around that. But the girls maybe do. And if they get tense, it's possible that they would tell their father that the boys are shooting hockey pucks at us, and their father would go down there and kill those boys. It sometimes happens. Recently I heard that somebody got killed at a soccer match by one of the parents. It can escalate to that, to severe violence around people believing their image of what's happening.

[86:32]

So in some sense no act is small enough such that if you... I should say no situation is so small that if you held to it according to your ideas that it couldn't produce harm to beings. And I would also say no situation is so bad such that if you didn't hold to it you couldn't bring peace. And the most astounding things would be if someone in the face of tremendous violence could do that. But sometimes no one's that skillful. And the Buddha had a student, I see you, a Buddha had a student who was his cousin who tried to kill him three times. And he never, he never believed his idea of who that person was, I say. So he could respond compassionately in all three cases.

[87:35]

But he still couldn't wake up this person who kept trying to kill him. And also he still said that as a result of this person doing this thing, this person is going to experience great suffering as a result of them doing this. He couldn't stop the violent consequences coming to this person who was violent. but I'm actually suggesting that no matter how violent it is, I'm talking about unconditional compassion, which isn't just that you feel compassion towards people no matter how cruel they're being to you, but that you see that compassion is happening in this violent scene. Without saying, this is not a violent scene. No, you say, I myself have a view of this scene as violent. I see people being cruel to each other. I see that. And I want people to become liberated from this world where they're not being kind to each other.

[88:39]

I see over here a scene where it looks to me like these people are being kind. But I want these people to become free of believing that the way they see kindness here is actually what's going on. And the reason why is over here they look kind. If they would become free of their idea that this is kindness, if they would become free of that, then they have a chance of coming over here where it looks like people are being cruel and realizing that there's kindness there and awaken the people in the violent situation, awaken them to the kindness that's actually happening, which they can't see. But in the situation where people look like they're being kind, we don't feel so... we don't feel so... extremely hard-pressed that we must find out how their kindness is actually not our idea of the kindness because we're so happy with the kindness we see. So we hold on to our idea these people are being nice and we don't let go of that and so we don't see how these people are really being nice.

[89:47]

If we could see how they're really being nice then in a situation where almost nobody would see that they're being nice see there's being kind, you would be able to see it there too. And then you could go into the situation and awaken others to the kindness that's happening there. And then everyone would realize we're actually not being cruel to each other. And then almost no one maybe would see that they're being cruel to each other. But still some bystander who doesn't see might still see. They look like they're being violent still. And that person might believe that. But another bystander might see it. They look like they're being kind, being cruel to each other, but they're not. And everybody in the situation that the person's watching, they know people could think we're being violent, but we're not. And you can question everybody in the situation who said, no, we weren't being violent. We were being intense. We were doing an intense dance, in a sense, an intense song and dance. But we weren't being violent. We were being loving. But I don't know how we were being loving.

[90:52]

I just understand that we were. It's beyond my idea. And I can understand how nobody would understand, how people would think that this was not kind, what we were doing with each other. But we felt that way. But some people could be watching it from outside and still think it looked that way and not believe it. Other people could be watching from outside and see that it looked that way. According to their karmic predispositions, there's past actions which lead us to see things a certain way. They can see This is how it looks to me and I believe it's that way. I do not see kindness. Other person can say, this is how it looks to me but I don't believe that and I do see kindness. And the people in the situation, it could be that all of them see kindness right while they know that it looks violent. It's possible. It's also possible that the situation would look When I say look, I mean that people would see it in a very radically changed situation when people start waking up.

[91:52]

So in fact, the Buddha never did really look that cruel, according to the records. But some of his close friends hated him and tried to kill him. Some of his close relationships tried to kill the Buddha. But the Buddha never hated those people because the Buddha understood those people weren't external. But they were working actually in peace and harmony with him so that he could show people how he deals with people who try to kill him. So we have wonderful examples of people trying to kill the Buddha and in one case, in some cases, the person who's trying to kill the Buddha, the Buddha like wakes up the Buddha points this person, the Buddha shows this person something, the person sees it and wakes up and realizes that the person he's trying to kill is his dearest friend and is totally transformed.

[92:55]

In another case, the Buddha is trying to show it, the person doesn't get it. So even Buddha was not able to awaken all people who were caught by their ideas of who he was and in being caught by their ideas who he was, some of them became violent towards him. Some other people were caught by their ideas of who Buddha was and were kind to Buddha according to their idea of kind. But the way that they were being kind to Buddha and the way that those who wanted to be cruel to Buddha, the way that both of those people were with Buddha, was compassionate, I'm saying. That the way they really were is that they were promoting the Buddha Dharma, which is what Buddha is here to promote. They were working with Buddha in this cosmic drama to realize how we're working together. To realize how we're working together, which is beyond our idea of how we're working together. What do you think about all that?

[93:57]

It raises questions then about non-duality and duality because it seems that you're painting a picture where the negative condition is necessary but positive and vice versa. And that seems to be establishing duality, not coming to some notion of non-duality. You're saying that duality seems to need non-duality? And that establishes duality? We have someone who is acting to us in a very aversive way. That is our opportunity to act in a Buddha way. So there is a dance there, as you described. There are two poles in that dance. There are two partners in that dance, not just one.

[95:00]

Yeah, but also, can I also say that I myself see you dualistically. not just that you're relating to me in a dualistic way, I also see you dualistically. So it's mostly the emphasis is on me seeing you dualistically, not you seeing me dualistically. For me, I try to be aware of how I see you dualistically and see if I cannot be caught by my seeing you dualistically. Not that I stop seeing you dualistically and I'm all purified and I don't see you dualistically and you're still over there seeing me dualistically. No. You may be seeing me dualistically, but I know that I'm seeing you dualistically because I have this dualistic imagery equipment which is operating. So I'm not trying to get away from my dualistic thinking, but rather to understand the teaching about it so that I'm not fooled by it. And then the dualistic thinking isn't exactly established it just has this conventional existence which I don't fall for anymore.

[96:04]

And then I can have a good relationship with you and you could be someone who's similarly liberated from your dualistic thinking or not. But if you're liberated and I'm still believing my dualistic view of you as a liberated person then I don't see how we're actually working together. I think you're the one who's liberated and I'm trying to catch up with you. But when I see my dualistic view of you and I don't believe it anymore, then I see we've always been working together. Whatever our state of development, we're always working together. We always were. So we awaken to the way we've always been, are right now, and always will be. Namely, we're working together. But because of our parakarmic background, we tend to see things dualistically. And we tend to be caught by our vision. So now I'm tipping myself off and sharing with you that I'm at risk of believing you're separate from me because I have the dualistic view.

[97:09]

But by surfacing my risk, I hope to promote my not being fooled by it. That's my hope and that you also will notice that you are thinking dualistically and you will not be caught by your dualistic thinking. You're thinking that there's you and me as two separate things. that you do that and you don't have to be ashamed of doing it because I'm telling you I do it too. It's not that you're the bad guys and I'm the one who's beyond that. I'm saying, I've got the same problem. Don't you have that problem? Now let's help each other get over it. And then we'll discover that there's another way we're working which is not our idea that we're working together but the way we're actually working together beyond anybody's ideas of how we're working together including Buddha's ideas. Buddha doesn't have an idea that's how we're really working together. Buddha sees it, but not his or her idea of it. Is that enough for today?

[98:14]

I really appreciate you hanging in there with this strange kind of thinking, this strange meditation. I know it's challenging and potentially confusing. So I appreciate you staying with me on this and working with me. Not abandoning me to this strange meditation all by myself.

[98:41]

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