Do you like this rain? Well, I'm happy that we're having this rain. I hope it's falling somewhere else, too. The whole country would like this, I think. If I speak like this, can you hear me all right? No? If I speak like this, can you hear me all right? No? If I speak like this, can you hear me all right? Okay, thank you. We're in the middle of a seven-day sitting. We're sitting for seven days here, about 50 of us, interspersed among those of you who came today. We're sitting with the faith, with the conviction and confidence that if we can sit properly, that this contributes to the happiness of ourselves and others, that it helps to bring peace to this world.

[01:24]

This is our faith and this is our effort. This is what the tradition of Buddhism is about, is to bring happiness to suffering creatures in the world with the hope that awakening is the most helpful thing you can do. That with the aid of awakening, you know what to do to help people. And so it is with that sense that we sit here for a week trying to find out what it is to be awake. And this week for the lecture topics what I have chosen is the six perfections of the enlightening beings.

[02:29]

Enlightening beings, sometimes also called enlightenment workers, are the beings who work for Buddha. They're sort of employed by Buddha. And they do the work of Buddha. And you can understand Buddha in the sense of like Shakyamuni Buddha, the Buddha that lived a long time ago, that we're his disciples carrying on his work, or that we're carrying on the work of enlightenment itself. In a sense, enlightenment doesn't really do anything. So we're here to do something for enlightenment, to promote it, to help to bring together the causes and conditions where it can manifest in this world. And traditionally there are these six perfections. They're called perfections, but they also mean going beyond.

[03:32]

Or six kinds of practices that, in a sense, transcend themselves, each one. These six are giving... That's a good one. That's the first one. It all starts there with giving. And then the next one is ethical study or ethical practice. The next one is patience. The next, a courageous effort. The next, concentration. And finally, The queen, the mother of all Buddhas. Perfect wisdom. Prajnaparamita, the mother of the Buddhas.

[04:35]

All five of these, of course, have to happen simultaneously. And when they all happen simultaneously, this is called, we call this Buddha. We also call it in Zen, just sitting. Prajnaparamita is a feminine, a female deity, thereby being the mother of the Buddhas. But the male representative of perfect wisdom sort of the crown prince of Buddha, is the deity which you see in the center of this meditation hall, the lovely, the famous Manjushri, whose name means pleasant splendor.

[05:39]

He symbolizes, he represents the effort to cultivate and realize, to appreciate the Prajnaparamita, perfect wisdom. Manjushri said to Buddha one day, the condition of being alive is precisely what we mean by awakening. The condition of a living being is exactly what we mean by Buddha. For a living being to be awake is just not to move.

[06:53]

That's what the crown prince said to his dad, Shakyamuni Buddha. But I would like to say that it's not so easy not to move. To moment by moment just be a living being is not so easy. What's easy is to wiggle and squirm to try to improve Beings are numberless.

[08:34]

I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. It's easy to try to improve make things better, go someplace else. Even though it's easy, it's unreasonable, of course. It's not reasonable to go someplace else, to want something other than what's happening.

[09:36]

But it's easy for us to do it, because it's easy for us to be unreasonable. And the reason why we're unreasonable is because we're in pain a lot of the time. So we want to get away from the pain and we think that the way to get away from the pain would be to try to go someplace else. Of course it follows us because we're creating it. Manjushri is saying if you're in pain If you can just not move, you will wake up. Each of us has some problems, some wounds, some illness, sometimes worse than others. But Pleasant Splendor is saying, if you can actually settle and sit still calmly

[10:46]

with a slight smile on your face. Doesn't mean you like it. It just means you don't move, that you will wake up. And even though the pain may not go away, you will be very happy. And not only that, but you will be effective in helping others and teaching them how to sit still also. Our great ancestor, our Zen ancestor, Dogen Zenji, said, to study the Buddha way is to study oneself. To study oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be enlightened by all things.

[11:58]

To be enlightened by all things is to drop one's body and other's bodies and mind. And there is a traceless enlightenment And this enlightenment goes on forever without any traces of an enlightenment which is cessation. Those four lines, I don't have time to go into all of them today, but I'd like to at least go into the first one. Dogen Zenji actually said this in Japanese.

[13:17]

What I'm saying to you is an English translation. And the key word in his Japanese teaching is the word narao. Narao. And narao can be translated as study. Study. So you could say it's to narao the Buddha way is to narao oneself. To study the Buddha way is to study oneself. The character, the Chinese character for narao has two wings in it. They go like this. Two little wings are the top part of the character. So the word narao means study, but it also can be used for like learning how to fly.

[14:17]

Little birds narao too. They narao flying. They study flying. You can use narao for learning how to dance and sing and learn a language. So when we say study, we don't mean... like study just like a book, although there's that kind of study too. All kinds of study, all kinds of learning could be nirala. So to study the Buddha way in all kinds of ways thoroughly is to study oneself thoroughly. To learn the Buddha way is to learn oneself of all things. The book that you can take with you everywhere, the class that never ends, This is the best class for enlightenment, and it's the most difficult one. We'd rather study a book or go to a movie or a class, because then you could leave.

[15:20]

But Buddhism, you can't get away from studying Buddhism, because to study Buddhism, to learn Buddha's way, is to learn what you are. This study never ends. until you learn. Once you learn, then it's over. But even though it's over, you have to start over. Now, when it comes to learning something, the best way to learn things, especially physical things, like riding a bicycle and tea ceremony or flying and singing, the best way to learn something really complicated is by imitation. So that's why in Buddhism we have a tradition of teacher and disciple, because it's mostly by imitation. Now, of course, you can also imitate your teacher.

[16:25]

Your teacher reads books, so you imitate your teacher reading books. So it's not just imitating your teacher. It's also imitating all the ancestors which your teacher is imitating. But the point is, it's imitation. You're modeling yourself on the teacher. You're modeling yourself on the ancestors, on the Buddha, on the life of the great practitioners. So you could also say, to model yourself on the Buddha way is to model yourself on yourself. Model yourself on yourself. That's what we call not moving. Moment by moment model yourself on yourself. If you're smiling, model yourself on a smile.

[17:29]

If you're crying, model yourself on crying. If you're sitting, model yourself on sitting. Whatever you're doing, do just that. Don't move from that. Model yourself on that, and that is modeling yourself on the Buddha way. Very, very, very, very simple. Also very difficult, because there's just that to do with no alternatives. It's called practicing what's happening. just practicing as such. Such a practice you can't get ready for, you must do it immediately without any hesitation. You're already doing it, just wake up to it. Okay? Now here we have people, 50 people sitting here trying to do that all day long for seven days.

[18:33]

They're on the second day now. How are you doing? Is it getting hard? Huh? It's hard? It's painful. Yeah. Yeah. In our Zen, in Buddhism, and Zen is a school of Buddhism, we are not into self-mortification. We do not try to make people have pain. That's the individual's doing. We just provide the opportunity. Once the pain comes, we don't say you should have pain, but once the pain comes, what we say is, if you've got pain, you should have pain. We just say, whatever pain you've got, you should admit that pain and not wish for another one. Don't crave for something other than what you have. This is the road to freedom from pain. So during the sessions that we have, a lot of people, almost everybody has some pain.

[19:37]

So everybody that sits these things has a chance to see if they can stay on their seat, to stay with what's happening. They can really see that clearly. And everybody who stays with what's happening, everybody who finally doesn't run away from the pain, becomes happy and free. It happens right here in this room. But it's not easy, especially when the pain becomes sort of intense. Because you think you have an alternative, right? You can walk out. This isn't a prison. You voluntarily came in here. But... If you do move, if you do walk out, you learn after doing it 1,000 times, 2,000 times, you learn it doesn't help. You learn that the real solution comes when you finally accept and sit still. Pain doesn't go away. You just get happy right in the middle of the pain.

[20:41]

Such a strange place to be happy. But that's where it happens. Model yourself on yourself, the ancestor said. And then he said, when you model yourself on yourself, modeling yourself on yourself means to forget yourself. Or modeling oneself on oneself is to forget oneself. The word oneself is interesting because it's, you know, how to spell it? O-N-E-S, right? Elf. One's elf. But also it sounds like one's self. But also it sounds like one self. Right? Now one's elf, that doesn't have much relevance for most people. But one's self and one's self, those have some relevance because it's as though there's somebody here who possesses a self.

[21:55]

but also there's one self. When you model one self on one self, you forget one self. You forget the one self, the one that you've been holding onto and protecting. You forget that one. You don't lose a self. You just forget that one precious one. And then you get tons and millions and trillions of wonderful free selves. They come in on you moment by moment because you forget the one. The one. There isn't one. And when you take one and model it on one, you'll forget that one. But it's not easy to do that. That's why we have these six paramitas to help us Sit still. To help us model oneself, just take oneself and put it right on top of oneself.

[23:02]

And then you forget oneself. And when you forget oneself, then everything that happens wakes you up. Everything that happens is liberating as soon as you forget the oneself, that one that you're holding onto. If we can just sit still, that's enough, but it's very difficult to really sit still because you can't do it all by yourself. So yesterday we talked about generosity. Actually, it's better to say giving. The first paramita in Sanskrit is called dana. And literally, best translation is giving, I think. It's also translated as generosity, liberality, charity, and so on. But generosity is great. It's a wonderful thing to be generous.

[24:04]

But giving is a little bit bigger than generous. And the bodhisattvas, the enlightening beings giving, is not just being generous. Generous is one of the aspects of giving. So I won't go into much detail today, otherwise I won't get to the one I want to get to today, which is the next one. But basically giving is when you let yourself be yourself. And when you let others be others. And what you let your lunch be your lunch. And then that is giving. That is the greatest gift that you can give to all beings, is to be yourself. Okay, the next one. Oh, by the way, I better not say that, otherwise I'll...

[25:06]

I'll get back into the... I'll tell... I'll give a whole lecture on giving again, so I got to stop myself. Stop. Okay. Next one is ethical study. Now, when I talk about ethical study, When Dogen Zenji talks about ethical study, when I talk about giving, again, remember, I'm talking about how to sit still. I'm talking about how to not move from being simply alive. All right? Always understand that these are instructions in sitting, instructions in not moving from being simply who you are. So the next aid to giving modeling yourself on yourself, the next aid to forgetting yourself, the next aid to be enlightened by all things, is called ethical study or ethical conduct or ethical practice, the perfection of ethics.

[26:12]

And just like the practice of giving is an enormous ocean of practices, So the practice of ethics is a huge field, the field of virtue. We need to practice giving in order to be ourselves, and we need to practice ethics in order to be ourselves. You don't need to practice ethics to be better than you are. Although probably, if that were possible, you'd probably need to practice ethics for that, too. I don't know. Anyway, nobody can be better than what they are. That's just impossible. But to be yourself, just to be plain old you, you have to practice ethics. If you don't practice ethics, you won't get to be you. Because you, what you really are, this person, this forgotten self that you really are, is ethical being.

[27:17]

So part of settling into what you are is to practice ethics. It's part of finding your way home to what you really are, is to study, learn ethical behavior. This is what the ancestors say. So the beginning of the bodhisattva, and another thing that a lot of ancestors say, is they say, this is the most important thing about a lot of different things. And they're not lying, they just really feel that way. So, generosity is exactly the same as awakening. And it's the beginning of the bodhisattva's practice. But also, generosity is also the beginning of the practice. Did I say generosity? I did twice? No. Generosity is the beginning of the bodhisattva's practice, and ethical conduct is also the beginning.

[28:25]

Receiving the precepts, receiving the precepts of ethical conduct is like the price of admission to Buddha's meditation. If you want to enter the ocean of Zen teachings, The price of the admission is receiving ethical conduct into your life and committing yourself to it. That's how you get in the gate. So it's really the initiation. So in a way, it's true that the whole thing starts with generosity or with giving, but it's like that takes you up to the gate. That gets you to the temple. To get in the door, you have to receive ethical teachings and practices and commit yourself to do them. You don't have to perfect them in order to get into the gate, but when you receive them and commit yourself to them, when you take them on sincerely, you get transported inside.

[29:31]

So it's the beginning, it's the initiation, it's the passing through the gate. Again, there's many ways to talk about it, but one way to talk about the practice of ethics is in terms of three aspects, which we call the three pure or the three cumulative precepts. One time there was a Zen teacher. They used to call him Señor Bird's Nest. He lived in a tree most of the time. Anyway, he practiced meditation up in a tree. And one day, he lived in China. This is a Chinese Zen monk.

[30:35]

He lived in a tree practicing meditation. One day, the governor of the province he lived in who is also a great poet, came to visit him and ask about the teaching. And he went and he looked up at him and he said, Master, isn't it dangerous up there? And the monk said, it looks to me like it's dangerous down there. And the governor said, well, why do you say it's dangerous down here? I mean, I'm a governor, and I'm in good health and make a good living and have bodyguards. And the monk said, I think he said something like, well, for today I'll change the story.

[31:36]

If you don't know yourself, what could be more dangerous than that? And the governor said, well, what does Buddhism have to say? And the bird's nest monk said, avoid all wrong action, do all good, engage in all good, and live to benefit all beings, all living beings. This is what all the Buddhas teach. And the governor said, well, even a child knows that. And the person in the tree said, yes, even a child knows that. But a man of 80, a person of 80, has difficulty practicing it.

[32:40]

These are the three pure precepts. avoid all wrong action, embrace all good and wholesome actions, and work for the benefit of all living beings. These are ethical study in three aspects. Sometimes when we think about precepts or ethical study, we may think that it's just the first one. namely, avoid wrong action. The first one is the ethics of restraint. The ethics of restraint or discipline. There is that aspect. Even if you're really generous, even if you let yourself give everything to the Buddhas, to all living beings, still,

[33:44]

If you're not careful, you'll fall on your face. And, you know, really slip. So you have... One aspect of the practice is to be careful of what you're doing. Restrain yourself. Discipline yourself. There is that aspect. But there's other aspects, too. Namely, the other one is engage in and embrace all wholesome activities. And then there's one more, and that is work to benefit other people, to help other people become mature spiritually. Those are the three aspects. And I might just mention, I can't go into detail on this, but in Zen Buddhism we talk about the Buddha's body having three aspects, truth body, the bliss body, and the transformation body, dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya.

[35:20]

The truth body is the body associated with the ethics of restraint. The bliss body, or sometimes also called the reward body, is the body associated with the ethics of accumulating good. And the transformation body The body that appears in the world, like Shakyamuni Buddha or some Buddha like that, that's the body that's associated with the ethics of maturing and helping other beings. So when it comes to sitting still, when it comes to modeling yourself on yourself, there's these three ethical aspects of modeling yourself on yourself. One of the aspects is restraint.

[36:24]

In other words, don't run away from where you are. Restrain yourself from leaving Restrain yourself from wishing for something other than this. Or even if you wish for something other than this, at least accept that you wish for something other than this, and that's what's happening. Restrain yourself from shrinking, from cringing from the present. Restrain yourself from jumping ahead of the presence. Hold yourself here. Provide a structure for yourself. That's one aspect of modeling yourself on yourself. But also another way to model yourself on yourself is to do good things. That's actually modeling yourself on yourself. Excuse me for telling this story, but one time, 20 years ago, I was at Tassajara, Zen Center's monastery in the mountains.

[37:45]

And actually, it wasn't quite 20 years ago, I shouldn't lie. It was 19 and a half years ago. It was the winter of 1969, my first practice period there. And the first day of work, there was a big rainstorm, and the creek washed out the water system. It had pipes coming from the spring, which ran from the spring across the stream to a reservoir, and the stream rose and washed the pipes out. And myself and another new student were sent up to do the plumbing work. And we found these pipes broken apart, and we put them back together. So we put one pipe back together, and then we went to look, fix the next pipe. And we walked a few steps, and I said to my friend, I said,

[38:54]

Let's go back. Can you hear me? Let's go back and fix the pipe. And he knew what I was talking about. We fixed the pipe, but we didn't really fix the pipe. We just kind of got by with it. And we went back and we really fixed the pipe. the way we knew we could fix it. And then we went on to the next pipe. This is who I really was at that time. This is who he was too. We were really We really knew how to fix the pipe a certain way, and we didn't do it that way. We flinched from doing it the way we knew was right. It wasn't beyond our skill level, and we weren't very skillful.

[40:09]

We went back and we fixed the pipe, and this was a great start for our practice. Wholesome, you know? Whole. W-H-O-L-E. Whole. Wholesome. Doing things that are really your whole, what you are, you know. You can call them good, too, but really it's right on the mark of what you are. Do those things. Do them all the time. Keep working to do wholesome things. Things that hit the mark for your life. Only you know what they are. But you do know. Because that's really, you know, the self that you're going to model yourself on. Mm-hmm.

[41:23]

The first one, the one of ethics of restraint. This teaching, by the way, is a teaching which comes from early Buddhism. If you know about early Buddhism, have you ever heard of the Dharmapada? It's one of the earliest written things about Buddhism. of the Buddha's teaching. And in there it says, what do all the enlightened beings teach? They teach avoid all wrong action, do all good action, and purify the mind. That's in the Dharmapada. Later in Buddhism they changed it slightly to Embrace, well, avoid all wrong action, which can also be said, to put it positively, embrace the rules of proper conduct.

[42:58]

And then embrace all good. And then benefit all beings. So in later Buddhism, in Mahayana Buddhism, they changed the last one, which is purify the mind, from early Buddhism, to benefiting or purifying other beings' minds. So in later Buddhism the understanding was, if you want to purify your mind, Yes, you should, but the only way to do that is to purify other people's minds. You can't really have a pure mind. I can't be over here like, I got this pure mind and you got dirty minds. Then my mind is dirty if I think that there's other dirty minds. To have a thoroughly purified mind, I have to purify other beings. I have to, I can't, of course I can't purify other beings, but I can work to help other beings purify themselves.

[44:13]

But anyway, this teaching was from very early Buddhism and comes down, goes to China and becomes part of Zen practice, Zen teaching, and now reaches us here. In Sanskrit it's called Kushala, Dharma, Samgraha. Kushala means wholesome. Dharma means things. And Samgraha means gather together and accumulate. This is not practicing and restraining yourself. This is kind of letting yourself go. You know? Go for it. Go for what? Help, you know, do good things. Let yourself go doing good things. It's not restraint anymore. There's not rules. You're not disciplining yourself according to rules in that dimension. And this clears, clears up, opens up the life stream, your life stream.

[45:21]

Your ever-changing life becomes cleared up, you know, by that second aspect. And the third one's called something like sarva-sattva-kriya. Sarva means all, sattva means beings, and kriya means to clean or purify. So it could be to purify this being, but also to purify all beings. And of course that matures and brings people to awakening. So these three aspects of the practice of ethics are one presentation of it, and they are basically to help us model ourself on ourself. Just to give you a few little examples of each type.

[46:34]

For example, the first one of restraining yourself according to monastic rules. And these monastic rules you can practice in your house. Even if your house isn't a monastery, you can practice some of these if you want. A lot of them are quite good for the house. One of the monastic rules is put things back where you found them. You can have that rule at your house or in your monastery. It's a rule in this monastery. But don't worry. Even though we have the rule, guess what we do? We're no better in the monastery than anybody is in their house. But still, we have a structure called return things to where you got them. Put things back where you found them. Now, if you find something, like if you find a teacup out on the lawn, if you take it away from the lawn, you should put it back in the lawn, I suppose, according to that.

[47:47]

But if you know it's from the kitchen, you can take it to the kitchen even though you found it on the lawn. But that's a case where you're returning something someone else took from the kitchen. If you take it from the kitchen and leave it on the lawn, please take it from the lawn back to the kitchen. Today, if you have tea, you're drinking from a teacup, you take it from the tray, put it back in the tray rather than leaving it on the ledge or up by the shop or in your parking lot. Is Lou Hartman here? One of our elder monks has taken on the obligation of being the wrath of God to people who don't return cups. So be careful. He's watching. Another monastic rule is when you move things, like a chair, move it quietly.

[48:52]

So if you're moving a chair back under the table or pulling off the table, rather than drag it across the floor, unless it's extremely heavy, lift it up. And when you're done, lift it up and put it back. Suzuki Roshi was very big on this one. He said chairs are already convenient enough. It's enough that we can sit up in chairs. We don't have to also push them around like that. And they make noise. I said this one time and a young man told me that they teach that in the army too. And also I later found out through my extensive study of Emily Post that she says so too. This is called manners. Ethics of manners. Another one. Well, that's enough.

[49:57]

You get the feeling, I guess, huh? Well, I'll tell you one more. One time I was having tea with Suzuki Roshi, and we see these black cushions here that we're sitting on, that you're sitting on. We were having tea and we were sitting on these black cushions. And then we got up and we had to rearrange the black cushions. So I rearranged the black cushion with my foot. So he turned to the person next to me and he yelled at the person, we don't move these with our feet. And he sort of went, well, why are you telling me that? So in that case, and he explained, we respect these cushions. We don't move them with our feet. We bend down and move them with our hands.

[51:01]

It's an act of respecting them and showing this big mind that respects everything. This is a monastic rule to help you realize what you are. And also, it was a good example for me because he didn't criticize me directly. He criticized someone who wasn't at fault, who later understood, I think. And I understood, too. What an interesting way to teach. And in the next category of doing things, accumulating good, one of the main things is try... Try to find a way. Try to find satisfaction solely by listening, studying, and practicing the truth. See if you can find all your satisfaction in listening, observing, and practicing the truth.

[52:12]

That's an example of doing good, doing something wholesome. There's other things. Another one is, that's pretty much it, I suppose, that one. Oh, another way to say it is listening, pondering over, and making a living experience of the truth. Making the truth alive. This is not a restraining kind of activity. This is a, I don't know what, it's more creative. Try to be creative. Like right now, can you hear the truth? Thunder helps. But when the thunder stops, can you still hear it? It's always coming in the old ear. Listen.

[53:13]

When you hear it, think about it. Ponder it. And then see if you can make it alive in your life. This is the second aspect of ethical behavior. Another aspect of the second one is to rejoice in the good qualities of others. When you see somebody do something neat, rejoice. And when they're doing something you don't think is neat, look at yourself. Almost all of us, at least in this society, are very good at criticizing others. I've met a few people who aren't. we call these people mentally retarded because they don't have the ability to criticize others anyway we do have that capacity and it can be quite useful but how about trying to appreciate others and when you see something that's not so good rather than criticizing them look at yourself well if you can forgive them too right off and then look at yourself

[54:45]

This is an example of cultivating good. Another thing that's good to do is scrutinize your own confusion and ignorance. Keep track of it. That's good. Being confused is not particularly good. But if you're not confused, then you miss out on a chance to practice good. Because if you're confused and you scrutinize your confusion, that's accumulating good stuff. Well, it's getting late, so I just wanted to say sort of one more kind of story. And it's a story about my life. I've told it before. And I partly tell it again to repay my gratitude to a man in my life.

[55:46]

And by the way, the word virtue, ethical conduct is also the practice of virtue. The word virtue has a root, comes from the root V-I-R, which means man. It also means, it also has the connotation of strength and capacity. It's related to also, in Sanskrit, the word for bull has to do with virility and fertility. But, you know, women also have this virulness too. They have this strength and capacity. this manliness within them. We need virtue in order to be manly enough or strong enough to face up to what we are. And when I was a boy...

[56:58]

I'm laughing because I was going to say I was a bad boy. But then I thought of Father Flanagan. Do you know who Father Flanagan is? Zen Center attracts people from all over the world, so a lot of my childhood stories I have to explain because many of you are from other parts of the world. There's a place in Nebraska called Boys Town. It's for orphan boys. And the person who founded it, his name is Father Flanagan. And he used to go around and find boys who were in trouble, boys that were sometimes called bad boys. And he would take them in and take care of them and help them grow up to be, I don't know what, to be good boys. And he always said, my grandmother used to tell me, Father Flanagan says, there are no bad boys. But I was kind of a bad boy. I tried that out, but really what I was was I was an energetic boy, and I found that doing bad things had a lot of juice.

[58:13]

And I actually, when I was 11 years old, made kind of a vow to be as bad as I could. And at that age, being as bad as I could was doing things like dropping water bombs from the third floor stairway of my school down to the first floor of my school, and things like that. It wasn't yet really that hurtful, but it was heading in that direction. And I lived in an apartment building, and in my apartment building, lived a man, a big man. I was 12 at the time, and I was a big boy for 12. I weighed 134 pounds. And I was big and strong and energetic and evil. And I liked it. And not only that, but... Well, I'll stop there.

[59:25]

And downstairs in my apartment building, I lived on the third floor, and down in the basement, there lived a man, and his name was Dick Grant. And he was about 40, 34, 40, somewhere in his late 30s, maybe. And he was 6'4", and he weighed 260 pounds. And he was a 1946 National Heavyweight Golden Gloves Champion. And he liked me. And he gave me a lot of attention. And one day he said to me, I want to tell you about my childhood when I was your age. And he told me some things he did. And he was bad too. Now he was bad and he was big. And he was strong. And he said to me, you know, it's pretty easy to be bad.

[60:33]

Now some people, you know, when they say it's pretty easy to be bad, they don't really know how easy it is to be bad because they don't really do it. They hold themselves back. But I felt like this guy, when he says it's easy to be bad, I believe he knows how easy it is to be bad. I think he knows. He said it's easy to be bad He said, but what's hard is to be good. And I thought, yeah, that's true. A lot of my friends were impressed. Even my teachers were impressed at how bad I was. And they gave me a lot of attention for it. But this guy was not particularly impressed. He loved me, but he was not particularly impressed by how bad I was. And he said, what's difficult is to be good. And I kind of thought, okay, I'm going to try it.

[61:40]

And ever since, I've been trying. And it's much harder. I haven't made it yet. But I still think it's the real thing to try to do is to be good, is to be who I am, to try to figure out where that is, how that is completely, and thereby forget who I am and thereby wake up. So I thank that Dick Grant for showing me the real challenge in life is to find a way to be good. And give and be patient and be courageous and be concentrated and be wise. In other words, what do you name it? It's a wonderful thing we try to do. We just keep trying. Never stop trying. So this week we're

[62:46]

sitting here trying to give completely, to practice all good, to avoid wrong action, to help all beings, to be patiently accept what's happening, to courageously enter into what's happening, to be concentrated on what's happening, and to awaken to what's happening. This is our effort this week, and I hope forever. So even if you're not sitting here with us, please join us. Help us. We need a lot of help. This is hard, and we'll join you because we know what you have to do is probably even harder. At least we know what's hard about our life, painful knees and so on. But you have, those of you who are bopping around the Bay Area, have a harder time to know what your challenge is, but let's help each other.

[63:49]

Okay?

[63:51]

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