Last month, when we met here, I brought up the seventh book of the Flower Adornment Scripture. This is part of an ongoing endeavor to bring together our traditional practice with this great scripture, which we have not actually done that before. As far as I know, at any of the Western Zen centers they haven't really gone through the sutra and tried to relate it to traditional Zen practice. So the sutra itself can be directly approached and plunged into, and we're doing that to some extent because that's one way to practice with it, but also the sutra can be brought together with stories and teachings from the Zen tradition and see how we can mutually discover the sutra in the Zen and the Zen in the sutra.

[01:22]

We can use the Zen to unlock the profound truth of the teaching, and we can see how our practice, our traditional Zen practice, is actually playing out and dramatizing and enacting this great scripture. And we've been doing that now for almost a year. Yeah, but we started in June last year and now we're in June again and we're still studying the Sutra and we're still studying Zen. So again, last week I brought up book number 7. Among the 39 books we have now reached a consideration of book 7, which is called the names of Buddha.

[02:24]

Or maybe a better translation would be, names of Buddha, without the, without the, the. Just names of Buddha. And quite a few of you were here last month, and some of you weren't. I think that will be just fine. So the seventh chapter of the great scripture is not very long, and I just review the basic structure of book seven, which is, names of Buddha are offered. and then after these names of Buddha, and I think maybe there's ten sets of ten names, or ten sets of quite a few names.

[03:31]

Anyway, lots of names are offered, and then there's a pause, and then there's a statement that these names are offered, these many, many, many names are offered, so that living beings can see and know in many ways. So we see and know already in many ways, and these names are to help us see and know in many, many varied ways. And then after that, the statement is made, or along with that, the statement is made, we just told you a bunch of names, and by the way, there are four quadrillion more, four quadrillion more that we could name. We just gave you whatever else, a few." And then it starts again, it gives another many names, and then it says, these names are given so that beings can see and know in many ways, and there could be four quadrillion more.

[04:39]

And this is repeated, but basically I take this chapter saying that names are given And the sutra has, not just in this chapter, but many other chapters, lots of names of Buddhas and names of Bodhisattvas are given to help people see and know the teaching of the Buddhas. And then last time, I brought up a particular example of a wonderful ancestor, a wonderful Bodhisattva named Master Ma. And Ma means horse. He's the horse master. And yeah. And I think I misstated his dates.

[05:51]

His dates are, I think correctly, today I would say his dates are born in 700, died in 788. And as he was kind of getting close to his death, he was seriously not well, The great Bodhisattva was not well. And this person who is described as not well is a Bodhisattva who is within the illness. He gives this wonderful teaching where he uses names of Buddha to help us understand and see. what's going on in our life. Here's 88-year-old sick person who's going to tell us about what's going on, and he's going to use names of Buddha to show what's going on.

[07:03]

So the director of the monastery comes to him and says, how is your health these days, teacher? And he says, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. That's what he says. That's the story. The teacher is using the names of Buddha to tell the director what's going on, how this teacher really is. And I think I mentioned last week that how this teacher really is, this teacher, Master Ma, how he really is, the sutra says, he is thus. That's how he is. And that's how all of us really are. We're really thus. That's what the sutra is saying. All of us, all the time, are thus.

[08:12]

But he didn't say that. He said it a different way. The sutra says that whatever's going on, the teaching of the Buddha is thus. He didn't say, I'm thus. He said, sun face Buddha, moon face Buddha. He showed that you can use the names of Buddha to show people thus. So some of you were here, you remember the story now? So then this story was appreciated. I don't know who was in the room when he said that, but at least the director seemed to be there. And I don't know if the director then walked away from the teacher and told the rest of the monastery what the teacher said, I don't know. Maybe there were some other people in the room, but anyway, word got out

[09:17]

of how the teacher responded to the question, how are you, teacher? And the word got out and spread all over China, and it spread to Korea and Japan, and it spread to Vietnam, and then it spread to the United States and Europe and it may have reached Africa by now and South America, this teach, this response about how the teacher, the Buddha is, is sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha and this teaching has been really appreciated for since 788. And I now would say that this was Master Ma showing the way he described his situation is just like Chapter 7.

[10:28]

He's using the names of Buddha to teach the way things are. And This story was chosen by a great Zen poet named Suedo. It was chosen by him to be included in his collection of the top 100 hits in Zen history up to that point. So he lived about 300 years after And this is one of the stories he used. And then he wrote a verse about this story. And the verse goes, Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha. Compared to this, the great sages of China

[11:36]

and the great emperors of China are really pale and lifeless. 20 years of bitter struggle. How many times have I gone down into the Green Dragon Cave for you? clear-eyed, patchwork monks do not take this lightly, and I would say that do not take it lightly could be an injunction, a command, but also could be a description. Clear-eyed monks do not take this story lightly. So that's the verse, and we talked a little bit about it.

[12:40]

And then last week, I was in Brooklyn, and I talked more about it. And particularly, I have been wondering what this bitter struggle is. And some of the thoughts that came when I wondered, what is this bitter struggle? that follows from the statement Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha, what is it? I thought, well, maybe it's the struggle to understand Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha, maybe it's bitter, maybe it's difficult to understand this teaching. Now, in a way it's a simple teaching, but to actually see how great it is, might be quite a struggle.

[13:42]

And as this retreat I was in in Brooklyn proceeded, it came to me towards the end of the retreat that the bitter struggle is struggling with how to love, how to love Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha, but also how to love sickness, how to love suffering, not like love, how to be compassionate with Moon-Face, Sun-Face, Moon-Face Buddha, because a lot of people were coming to see me, not a lot of people, the people in the retreat, which wasn't so many, And it seemed like they were struggling, kind of bitterly struggling with how to love. They wanted to love.

[14:50]

Pretty much everybody in the retreat seemed like they really wanted to love sickness and old age and sickness and infants. They wanted to love their children. They wanted to love their teenage children. They wanted to love their parents. They wanted to love their abusive parents. And they were having a hard time loving these beings, these sick beings, these moon-faced Buddhas. And then also, the struggle is how to Remember Sun-Face Buddha while you're working with Moon-Face Buddha. The Sun-Face Buddha, of course, wants to love all beings, is loving all beings, but the Moon-Face Buddha part, that part, those beings may be a struggle to love them.

[16:00]

Again, I felt so many ... these people these teenage kids, these screaming babies, these abusive parents. Not too many people were telling me about abusive spouses, but there's that too. And then there's abusive people on the street, but they weren't bringing that up so much. They were bringing up mostly people that were really close to them, their own precious children and their own abusive parents. And they were having a hard time loving these people, these people who were saying, I don't want your love. I don't want your love in the form of telling me about how I hurt you. I don't want to hear it. It's too late. How do you love? Anyway, so that's what I really felt like, yeah,

[17:03]

Understanding this teaching is a bitter struggle because it entails loving all these painful, difficult beings, outward and inward. It means also loving all your own illnesses, all your own frailty, all your own weakness, all your own suffering, all your own stupidity. if you happen to have any. And it's hard. And people during this retreat have also come to me and said, they're struggling. And I say, yeah, well, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about struggling with great compassion and struggling with forgetting about great compassion. It's not always struggle, and I think I have mentioned to you a number of times, I was kind of struggling for the first three years I was at Zen Center, I was struggling, but I wasn't discouraged because I heard about the bitter struggle of the ancestors.

[18:28]

I heard they had a hard time. So it wasn't like the message I got. The ancestors had a really easy time. They just like, no problem. They had no problems, no struggles. They were just blissed out. But I didn't hear that. I saw stories of where they had difficulty, where people were attacking them and criticizing them and hating them. I heard about those stories. And I also heard, to make it even more difficult, people praised them. So attack and praise mixed together very dynamically. This is hard to deal with. So they had a hard time. So I thought, well, I'm having my own little hard time here too, mostly with my own body. And that's part of the reason I came to study Zen, was to learn about how to work with my body. I didn't have so much training on how to work with my painful body.

[19:33]

I had training on how to use it, but not so much how to be kind to it. And when I came to Zen Center, I actually was kind to my suffering. I didn't push so hard that I ran away from it. I pushed, I stayed in difficult situations, but I never got to a place where I thought, I'm done with this. This suffering's just too much, I'm outta here. I just was visited by a story which I heard about one of the beatnik writers, beatnik poets, And I think it's one of his poems. He's talking about walking down the streets of San Francisco and going by a stoop in front of an apartment building. And on the stoop is sitting a black man.

[20:37]

And the black man is sitting on the steps with his face in his hands in abject misery. And the poet says, If I have to see this again, I'm out of here. He was like, this is just too much. I cannot stand this. And I guess he saw it again and he left. He disappeared. He walked into the Sierras. People saw him going and he never came back. And so me and some other people think, he was just fed up with misery. He was not gonna do this bitter struggle anymore. He'd done enough. Now he's gonna call it quits. So anyway, I was having a little bit of difficulty, but I was aware of it.

[21:40]

I was aware that I was having a hard time, particularly in sitting a lot. And then, around this time of year, right around now, I was at Tassajara, and Suzuki Roshi was there too, and I went to him and said, I'm not having a hard time. I was not having a hard time. I was not bitterly struggling, but I was struggling a little bit because I thought maybe I was becoming psychotic or something, dissociating. So I went to him and said, Roshi, I'm not having a hard time. Am I in denial? And he said, maybe for you, sometimes it's not going to be hard. I thought, okay.

[22:42]

And then he took a piece of paper I think, and fold it and explain it. When people practice origami, a folding paper, I think the folding is quite difficult and requires a lot of skill sometimes. So the folding is sometimes quite difficult. But then after you fold it, you just press on it. And the pressing isn't so difficult. Once the fold's made, press on it. So I thought, oh yeah, I've been doing some folds, and they've been difficult, and sometimes I did them wrong, probably. But now maybe I'm just sort of pressing down on the fold. And I don't know how it came up, but either he said it, or I thought, when's the next fold gonna be? And maybe that same day, later that day, or the next day, one of the Zen Center officials came to me and said, after being asked to stay at Telsahara for a couple more years?

[23:53]

And I said, okay. The same person came to me and said, would you please leave Telsahara and go to the city center and be the director? And I said, well, did you ask Suzuki Reji? And he said, yeah. I said, okay. And it was difficult, difficult to leave, difficult to be there in the city center. But I was up for it. And also I got, I had a teacher there with me to hang out with while I was being director. So it's not always difficult and that can be difficult. All right, so then in this case that I just told you about, this story is story number three in the Blue Cliff Record and poem number three in the Blue Cliff Record.

[25:01]

And then about 50 years later, ancient teacher named Hung Jer, he also wanted to make a collection of Zen stories. So he collected his, I don't know what favorite, but anyway, he collected 100 more stories as the main cases for his collection. And he wrote verses for each of the 100 stories. Some of the cases he chose were also in the previous collection of the Blue Cliff Record. And one of them that he chose was number three. So he also chose Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha. So the two greatest collections the most venerated collections of Zen stories, besides the one that has them all, is Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha.

[26:13]

In that case, it's case number 36. Same story. But apropos of our discussion here, I would say that it's possible. It seems to me that when he made his collection of the Zen stories, he chose the Zen stories that he thought were demonstrating the flower adornment scripture. The previous, I don't see the previous compiler poet as sort of collecting stories sort of under the, criterion of the teachings of this great sutra, but I sort of see it to me now that Hongjue collected his poems and took the ones from the previous collection that demonstrate how Zen people performed this sutra, brought this teaching to people in ordinary human interactions.

[27:21]

Yeah, so here's the example. Again, the example is Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha to bring the Sutra, but Hongjue's poem is different. He's not emphasizing the struggle to engage with moon-faced Buddha. He's not sort of emphasizing the difficulty of struggling with illness and also the difficulty of struggling with how illness and impermanence is pivoting with great radiant health and endless practice. He's not emphasizing that struggle, but the previous one did. There's a struggle there. What he emphasized more was the wondrous working of Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha. So he says, his poem starts out the same way, and he was never accused of plagiarism.

[28:38]

He says, Sun-Face Buddha, Moon-Face Buddha. And then he says, stars fall. Thunder crashes. The mirror beholds images with no subjectivity. The pearl in the bowl rolls on itself. So he's more showing the actual way, not just a struggle of engaging Sun-Face Buddha and Moon-Face Buddha, but he goes right to how do Sun-Face Buddha and Moon-Face Buddha pivot on each other?

[29:40]

How do they dance together? And yeah, in his story there's no sticking points. When we first start looking at the dance between illness and health, between impermanence and trans-permanence, there may be sticking points, and those hurt. I do not want to be compassionate to this illness, to this difficulty. No, no, no, no, no. Or I do, but I'm holding back. I'm being stingy. It's more emphasizing when things are really going in accord with thus. So he's teaching thus that's been realized, which is the pearl in the bowl rolling on itself. This is the actual authentic practitioner pivoting between self and other, between subject and object,

[30:47]

between birth and death and nirvana. This is another picture of thus. Thus is not nirvana, thus is not samsara, thus is how they're rolling on each other, smoothly, no hindrance. So that collection I think is, we will be able to find 100 and more demonstrations of how the ancestors enacted this sutra. All day long. we have a chance to contemplate the pearl in the bowl rolling on itself, not getting stuck any place in the process.

[32:00]

There are other examples of where there's cases in the Blue Cliff Record that are also in the Book of Serenity. And again, I think probably most of them, where they're in both, is where the one that's in the Blue Cliff Record is also demonstrating the great teaching of the flower adornment scripture. And so we will be considering more examples of that to the end of time. And before the end of time comes, is there anything you'd like to bring up? Yes, Charlie. Are they bitter concerns?

[33:36]

No. Maybe later. You have some concerns. Are those like worries? Like a worry? Yeah, like, so... But I think it's... I don't know. I feel like this comes up every time we talk about it, but... You know, when you go to the theater lately and they say, we acknowledge that this theater is on ancestral lands, et cetera, et cetera. And I think to myself, oh my God, we're gonna do this every time. And I'm like, well, maybe it's important to do it every time, to acknowledge these concerns. And the concern that comes up for me every single time when we talk about loving someone who's abusing you is that it just seems like this dangerous, dangerous message that needs to be handled carefully. And I've heard this from a lot of friends, too, and I've heard this here at Noah Boad, that when we say that, I feel like we need to say, or I feel the need for clarity around, wait, how do we do that safely?

[34:52]

You know, sometimes I try really hard to love people that I feel are being abusive towards me, and I worry that I'm at risk of running off into Sierras and calling it quits. And so what's a good medicine or technique, or how do you practice remembering something that'll keep you here and not let you take too much of this. What does that facet of the practice look like when you're loving someone who's being abusive to you or to others? Or perhaps loving me when I'm being abusive to myself. You brought up several things, all very interesting, but let's go back to the noting that this theater is on Native American, indigenous people's land. Let's go back to that, okay? And I think you kind of appreciate the point.

[36:06]

And he said, but then he says, does it always have to happen? And I would say, I think it's going to keep happening until we really love that message. If that message does not feel sufficiently loved, it's just going to keep coming up. And if your concern doesn't get love, it's going to keep coming up. Your concern is, I think, appreciated and respected Just like the concern for the relationship of the Europeans to the Native Americans. It's a very important thing to listen to. And your concerns are very important to listen to. And your concerns are going to keep coming up. And while they come up, then it's not to get rid of your concerns.

[37:08]

I'm not going to say that's not a concern. The thing is, as you said, to remember the medicine for the concern. And to remember that the medicine is not trying to make dangerous situations safe. It is embracing dangerous situations and safe situations. and aware that no matter what's happening there's always the danger, there's always the possibility, I should say, of harm. It's always possible. And to love that possibility and to love when the possibility seems to become happening, seems to be manifesting. But you're concerned is something also to love. So you tell me about that.

[38:09]

I want to remember to love your concern, to respect it, to not try to get rid of your concerns and make you somebody who doesn't have those concerns and is just whoopee, avatamsaka sutra. And you're going like that, and I want to love you who thinks that's true. Do you think that's true? It's just true now. So I told you the story about my grandson and we got him a new bike in San Francisco. Remember that story? Some of you do and some of you don't. So maybe those who do, can I tell it again? So here's the story. We get him this nice new bike in San Francisco and he lives in LA. So I bring, so I go to L.A. to do a retreat, and I bring his bike, his new bike, and I meet him, and his mother, and his stepfather, not stepfather, yeah, I guess stepfather, I meet his parents, and I say, here's the bike, and he says, thanks, he says, riding around, I said, do you like it, and he said, yeah, and she, referring to the little girl,

[39:33]

who is in her mother's stomach, her mother's uterus. He refers to this coming sister. He says, she's not going to be able to... I'm not going to let her ride the bike. And I said, by the time she can ride it, you're not going to be using the bike anymore. He says, I still don't want her to use it. I said, well, you're going to be an entirely different person when she's old enough to ride the bike. And he said, that is totally incomprehensible. And some of you might think, that's not so difficult. But there's other things which you think are difficult to believe. So this sutra says over and over, This sutra is really difficult.

[40:35]

This sutra is difficult to believe. This sutra is easy to think it's dangerous. But it doesn't say you shouldn't be afraid. It doesn't say you shouldn't have difficulty. It says that's normal. Struggle is normal. So, yeah. We're trying on something where there's always the possibility of a bitter struggle. I'm not trying to get rid of bitter struggles, I'm trying to grow Buddhas in the field of bitter struggle, if there is any. And if the bitter struggle becomes no struggle at all, then I want to grow Buddhas in no struggle at all. No matter what's going on, it's just one practice and it's the practice of thus. I might ask, do you feel I love your worry, your concern?

[41:37]

Yes. Do you feel like I'll love you even though you keep getting concerned to the point where you say, is this always going to be here? And I would say, it won't be there anymore when it doesn't need to, you know, encourage you to be compassionate with it. I'm not saying there's All problems, in a way, stem from misunderstanding the Dharma. They all come from not understanding the truth. And so, if we have this teaching and people are not misunderstanding it, that's okay with me. And then they're not doing any harmful things, because they don't misunderstand this teaching. But there's other ones, too, and we're not gonna not bring them up so they won't misunderstand them, because they can't deal with them, they're going to come without guidance, and that's another thing about the Lew Welch story, which I also mentioned in Brooklyn, is in a way he was a Bodhisattva, he cared about this person, he cared about people, he really did, but he didn't have a teacher and a Sangha, and there was a whole bunch of people in that generation

[42:59]

Zen. And some of them wrote books, which some of you have read, and people are still reading them, and they're very encouraging, because these people have insight. But some of the greatest writers didn't have a teacher, they didn't have anybody to say, I'm having difficulty, as a matter of fact, I just noticed that I'm medicating my difficulty with alcohol. They didn't have a teacher or even a teacher say, well, how do you practice zazen, Suzuki Roshi? These people, these beatniks, they lived at the same time as Suzuki Roshi. They didn't know about him. They did meet him, but they didn't say, Roshi, would you teach me how to deal with this suffering? So they did it on their own, and they had some really good ways to do it, which killed them. Wonderful people. wonderful people. They couldn't all figure out how to say, Roshi, please help me deal with this suffering.

[44:06]

And Roshi could say, oh okay, come and sit with me. We'll work on that difficulty, because they'll have difficulty sitting. We know that, and we can help them with that, and that can then be extended. But they didn't come. Almost none of them came. Some of them came, and they learn how to deal with their suffering. They learn to deal with their lack of understanding of the way things are. But we need, and I came to Zen Center to get help, and it was there, and it was help in the form of a Sangha which helped me do the study and help from the teacher with how the study was going. Yeah. So we need somebody to help us remember the medicine. We need the teacher who, like, gives us the medicine and then walks off and tells us he's dead so that we'll take it.

[45:13]

Because the teachers give medicine and people don't take it, but then that's not the end of the story. They can do something else to entice them into taking the medicine, to applying compassion to our worries. to our questions. Never trying to get rid of questions. Always welcoming them and encouraging love for them and encouraging understanding them. So thank you for your many questions. And I'm in no hurry for you to have no problems. Yes and yes? Can you say something in the relationship between this kind of love that you're talking about and in the second story that there's this subject, subject-less mirror. Is there a relationship there?

[46:14]

So, the mirror is contemplating forms. So for example, the mirror is contemplating the form of Chayin and Homa and Kurt. The mirror is contemplating you, is facing you. The Buddha is facing you. Buddha is sitting with you, and you could also be sitting with Buddha the same way Buddha is sitting with you. But Buddha is sitting with you with no, I'm over here looking at her. Buddha is not, I'm here looking at her. There's contemplation of your face by the mirror, sun face, moon face, Buddha. The mirror could also turn around and contemplate the person, the inner person, and that also would be contemplating it, but there's nobody in addition to the contemplation. We could also turn and look, the mirror can look at the self.

[47:17]

Now the self becomes an object, but there's no subject separate from the object. There's just perfect reflection. And then there's no sticking point, and then the pearl rolls. So we observe the suffering of the world, or there is observation, but there's nobody here doing it. You could say, well, somebody here is the observation, but that's not a subject, that's just observing. That's one way to understand that line, but there are four quadrillion other ways to understand it. The sutra is saying there are four quadrillion, so even though we have these wonderful ways you can come up with four quadrillion more, and four quadrillion times four quadrillion, because everybody owns it.

[48:25]

So this Sutra is encouraging, giving us all kinds of wonderful examples, which are too much for a lot of people, and this is just a drop. So the Sutra is also opening us to, like, stop resisting infinity, not to mention stop trying to get infinity. Don't try to get it, don't try to resist it. It's infinite, and infinite is very particular. Okay? And how does love that you were just talking about fit in this narrative? Love is that way of looking at people, where you're looking at them but you're not separate from them. This kind of love, this kind of great compassion doesn't really have any objects. It just is all-suffering beings. Great compassion is not in addition to all-suffering beings.

[49:27]

It is just all-suffering beings, thus. That's the kind of love it is. And then we work up to that kind of love with having, I love you, I love her, I love him, I am patient and generous with him and her. That's where we start. And we think he's what I think he is, and I'm who I think I am. We start like that. So then there's subject and object, and they're separate in the early phases of our learning to love. So I'm here, my teenager's over there, my abusive parent's over there, and I'm trying to be kind. This is a warm-up, and it has drawbacks. It can be quite tiring to do this separation thing over and over, but we learn the limits of it, and then we learn another kind of compassion, which criticizes the first kind as being a little bit not in accord with the teaching. And then we get over that one, and we just become all beings, which we always have been.

[50:32]

And that's what really saves. This non-dual relationship with all suffering liberates all suffering. Yes? I think you've kind of been talking around this and answering it. It's about love. And I feel, my comment is, I feel that advertising in Valentine's Day have confused us on the word love. Say again? Advertised? Advertising. Yes. And Valentine's Day has given us some confusion about the word love and what that means or what that looks like. Some messages do seem to promote confusion. Yeah. I think embedded in your response to Chayi you may have covered this, but I wonder if you could say what, if you might have some other language for how you're using love.

[51:41]

Yeah, the basic other language. No, it's compassion. Compassion is another word, but I don't want to avoid the word love, but compassion. So compassion, when it sees the propagation of confusing messages, Compassion observes them without subjectivity. Without subjectivity thus, would you say? Great compassion opens to that. When confusing propaganda or confusing advertising appears in the world... Or situations. Or a situation. When those confusing messages arise, The teaching is thus, the way the thing is is thus, the way confusing messages, the way confusing thinking really is, is thus, and how do you open to thus?

[52:44]

By practicing compassion with whatever it is, and then you open to the teaching. So this sutra does not so much emphasize compassion over and over. It mostly emphasizes wisdom, but part of the way it calls for compassion is for you to be able to be compassionate and love how difficult the sutra is. The sutra is really not simple and it irritates almost everybody, it irritates in their own particular way. It sounds like you're saying life is not... it's irritating. You could say life... Yeah, but rather than talk a lot about... It does mention it like 44 million times, but not compared to the light and the thus and the wisdom. It's mostly about how to take bodhisattvas who are practicing compassion and open their minds and hearts to reality. But if we don't love phenomena,

[53:46]

we're not going to be able to see what they are. We love them first, and then seeing what they are liberates them. Just one more thing. I feel like, I think that you've been teaching over some time about relationship. And so maybe what's coming up today is how we're going to be in relationship to an abusive situation or disappointment. Yeah, right. So, loving an abusive relationship means being in conversation with it. It means finding intimate communion with all abusive beings. Which doesn't mean stay there with them. What? It doesn't mean to stay in it. No, don't stay in it, because it's turning. Do not try to stay in this. that's gonna trip you up. Just hear the teaching and try to remember it when the next slap comes.

[54:53]

And the teaching is saying, be compassionate with all slaps, welcome them, not like them or dislike them, welcome them. When you're slapped, you are being slapped. And not welcoming it, you're just trying to get away from what's going on. When somebody gives you a confusing message, the teaching is not saying, get rid of the confusing message, it's saying, love it! It says, be in intimate conversation with it. that will realize the dharma of the situation and that will liberate beings. But we have to love this messy situation before we're going to be able to participate in its liberation. That's the bitter struggle part. The first one saying, this is a bitter struggle to love all this stuff, to find a way to really not try to get rid of all problems or even get rid of any problems.

[55:58]

or even get rid of the one who's trying to get rid of problems. Now, sometimes when problems are gotten rid of, it gives rise to a very intense worldly pleasure. I'm not denying that getting rid of certain problems is really nice. Like, I had this procedure on my abdomen where they opened up my aorta so that the blood was flowing more smoothly. It was really nice. Now I had blood going into my thighs so I could walk up the hills around here. Really nice. Worldly pleasure. Thank you so much, doctor. You are so skillful. You are so kind. And maybe the doctor was not trying to get anything from this. So maybe she wasn't just skillful, she was like compassionate. But anyway, there was a worldly pleasure in being able to walk without my leg, thighs burning. That's worldly pleasure. But the pleasure of the Bodhisattva is the pleasure of not trying to get rid of anybody.

[57:07]

but liberate everybody through compassion and wisdom. Okay, well, I see two people there, and let's do this one up here first. It's going to be short. Owen objects that I'd like to take a few pictures from the balcony this afternoon during sitting or lecture. And if you'd rather or not, you can come see me at lunch, and that would be perfectly okay as well. Well, during lecture, they're not going to be able to talk to you about the lecture during lunch. So do you feel okay about him taking a picture now? Anybody got a problem with him taking a picture from up there now? Okay, you got clearance for now.

[58:14]

And then, anybody have a problem with him taking pictures during sitting? Okay. Thank you for being so kind, so generous with this person. Okay, Denise. I just have some confusing thoughts, I'll just... Welcome, confusing thoughts. of not going into situations having an agenda and then the other part is so in a conversation it's almost like you're in a script especially with your loved ones Well, it's not really a script, it's more like a piece, but this conversation piece is not followed by a scripted response.

[59:16]

Well, habit creates scripts. Yes, so this is talking about using your conversation piece in such a way to become free of the habit, so the pearl rolls of itself, there's no hindrance, there's no like giving the answer you used to give. However, if you are into the conversation and you notice that you're speaking from habit, then that's painful, and that would be something to be kind to. And the more kind you are to the scripted conversation, the more you'll get ready to have a conversation that's unscripted. But it does have little offerings. but they're offered and then given away. Not offered to make things go a certain way, because if you have a way you want them to go, it doesn't go that way. But to offer them as a gift, you're ready for what actually follows, for the response.

[60:19]

It seems that the spontaneity taps into something that's innate. the way that a conversation can suddenly turn to a new direction... The way it's really going is spontaneous, but spontaneous doesn't mean it doesn't have conditions. It just means the conditions give rise and then there's no meddling with it or resistance to it. That's what moves? That's the thus. and a home mom. And I love this teaching. Then my question is, is there a point that thus realizes it is I and I is thus? Is that Well, that's one of our poems too, from our ancestors, you know.

[61:22]

If I seek outside, that's no good. Everywhere I go, I meet it. Now, I am it, and in truth, it is not me. So, now I am it, and it is not me. So, it's not just I am it, it's also it is not me. That's one expression of where the conversation really is going. So that's what keeps it rolling. That is not going to keep it rolling, that is the rolling. That's the rolling. And again, things are rolling and then we flinch and tighten up, and then we miss it, or we fall into it. So it's a constant challenge to be present and relaxed, patient, respectful of all suffering, of all opinions, of all thoughts.

[62:36]

Is that enough for this morning? I mean for this afternoon? For the early afternoon? Are we okay? Thank you so much. Homage to the Avalokiteshvara, homage to our family tradition.

[62:56]

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