It appears to me that the tradition of the teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha is very much a teaching of non-violence. It's a teaching about how to not harm, how to be non-violent and how to be beneficial. And it also seems to me that a key ingredient in realizing nonviolence, in being nonviolent, is being fearless. And two of the main things that I might bring up today about being fearless are the practice of patience and the practice of allowing, inviting our fear to come out in front.

[01:37]

Once again, I feel that And being non-violent in the face of violence or in the face of even the threat of violence is necessary in order... I mean, being fearless is necessary in order to be non-violent in the face of violence or the threat of violence. And in order to realize fearlessness, I need to be able to face my fear in a balanced way, and I need patience also in order to face... Not also. Facing my fear in a balanced way entails being patient with the experience of fear. And wisdom is also, I'm afraid, also necessary in order to be fearless.

[03:01]

If we are wise and fearless, we can be nonviolent, perhaps, in any situation. If we are afraid, we can... I think people can be nonviolent when they're afraid. sometimes, but we can be driven to violence if we're afraid. Not only do some religions teach nonviolence and teach wisdom, But I think part of our fears might be fears of not only others in general, but other religions. So part of fearlessness is also to bring out and engage with other religions, engage our fears of other religions.

[04:16]

seems to me that the more we are able to face and be aware of, or able to be aware of and face our own fears in a balanced way, the more we may be able to encourage others to face their fears and thereby protect ourselves and others from being possessed and manipulated by fears. About 40 years ago, somebody gave me a book by Krishnamurti and I read the first paragraph and the last sentence on the first paragraph was something like, wherever you go in the world, all the people you meet are, and I turned the page,

[05:22]

And I thought, hmm, is that true? That wherever you go, the people are afraid? Some religious people might be embarrassed to say that they're afraid. Maybe we can be fearless and afraid at the same time. Maybe fearless doesn't mean there's no fear. Maybe it just means that you face the fear and dance with it in a beautiful way. Shakyamuni Buddha, it seems to me, was a person who was afraid and anxious. When he became Buddha, perhaps all of his fear disappeared.

[06:29]

But anyway, at a certain point he was afraid and he did face his fear, according to the stories. There was something about his meditation practice that brought the fear out in front where he could be confronted by it and where he could meet it and become fearless. One of the most amazing and in a way frightening developments of the latter part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st century is the appearance in every major religious tradition of a militant piety, popularly known as fundamentalism.

[07:42]

A militant piety, popularly known as fundamentalism. Fundamentalisms, these fundamentalisms can cast aside many painfully acquired insights of liberal culture and then fight to kill in the name of their religion. They are embattled forms of religiosity.

[08:52]

They are religions feeling themselves to be under attack. Here in America, even the majority religion of Christianity. There are certain segments of the population of the Christian tradition in this country that feel threatened. They feel threatened. They think that their religion will be annihilated. It's similar to, I guess, the white supremacists. They're called white supremacists, but actually they feel themselves to be on the verge of extinction. They think that the white will be eliminated from America. Even though the whites, in some sense, are the majority, part of the majority feels that it may be eliminated. Even though the Christians are the majority, part of the Christians feel that they will be eliminated.

[09:58]

Even though the Buddhists are the minority, some of the Buddhists feel that they'll be eliminated. Even though there's more than a billion practitioners of Islam, many of them, a segment of the population, feels that they may be eliminated, annihilated. Among the Jewish tradition, some of them feel that they will be eliminated, annihilated. Among the Hindus, some of them feel they will be eliminated. And this sense of threat and fear, coupled with religion, gives rise to a militant piety. If we could assist all beings to face their fears, to become fearless, perhaps their religion would not be this aggressive, militant form.

[11:14]

When I first came to California, 80% of the people were opposed to capital punishment. About 40 years later, 80% are in favor of capital punishment, supposedly. 20% oppose it now. Big change. I felt like I was in the majority when I arrived on that score. Now I'm in the minority. Feeling myself in the minority, and also being a member of the Buddhist tradition, feeling myself to be in the minority, but particularly in the minority around capital punishment, I can easily feel threatened. I can feel afraid. Afraid that I'm irrelevant, out of touch, and maybe even other threats. So there's something to be afraid of, so there's some fear for me to bring out in front.

[12:27]

And again, the Christian tradition has a saying from Jesus that what is in back, what we keep in back will destroy us. What we bring out in front will liberate us. A person I know has had ill health for about 40 years. This person is about 50 years old, and she's been sick since she was 12. And just a few days ago, she finally found out what her disease actually was. She had innumerable symptoms. the main one being that she was almost always in pain, and pain in her teeth often.

[13:31]

And all these years, couldn't find out what it was, and finally someone found that she actually had an infection, a sinus infection. It took 40 years to find it. I think most of us have a fear infection. It isn't just the Islamic peoples that have a fear infection. It isn't just the religious people that have a fear infection. Perhaps we all have it, but are we aware of it? If we aren't, we'll be sick. If we are, we can become healthy. So some people help me, if I talk about this fear, some people help me by saying, could you tell me of a recent fear?

[14:57]

Someone asked me recently. Someone recently asked me to tell them about a recent fear. And I said, well, how about now? Want to know what I'm afraid of right now? So what am I afraid of right now? Well, I'm afraid of unskillfully fulfilling the responsibility of sitting on this seat with this amplifier close to my throat. Now, the amplifier actually makes me feel more comfortable because I don't have to yell for you to hear me. Can you hear me in the back, Steven? You can still hear me? Okay. So I like, the amplifier makes me feel more like, hey, maybe I can be heard.

[15:58]

But I'm actually a little afraid that I won't be skillful in this talk. But now I think the fact that I told you that was pretty good. I'm not petrified. I'm not driven to violence by this fear of being unskillful and talking with you this morning. And I say talking with you, but actually it's not... it's actually the responsibility of sitting where I am. And it's the responsibility of when I speak, speaking well. And it's the responsibility of when I'm quiet, to be quiet well. For my silence to be skillful and my speaking to be skillful, I'm a little afraid, I'm somewhat afraid that I won't be skillful, that I won't be helpful. And so I have a question for you.

[17:04]

Are you in touch with some fear right now? And if you are, I say, good. I say your awareness of your fear is an essential element in realizing peace among beings. Once again, you and I need to be aware of our fear in order to be fearless And we need to be fearless in order to be a being of nonviolence in this world. If we all can be aware of our own fears and face them skillfully, this awareness will create a nonviolent presence, a powerful

[18:14]

non-violent presence. A non-violent presence that because it's connected to facing fear and fearlessness, it can go and get close to, appropriately close to, violence. And it can tame the violence. At least it can tame the violence in people. I don't know about volcanoes, but people actually like to be tamed of violence because violence is, to some extent, very painful if it's directed towards any other living being. But people actually want to be pacified and gentle, gentilized, tenderized. We actually want it. But who can approach the person who is enraged, who is frightened and enraged, who is frightened and defensive and enraged and insane?

[19:31]

Who can approach this person and help them? A fearless one. And once again, I have a chance, a good chance, of being fearless if I can face my own fear. And if I'm not facing my own fear, I don't know if my fearlessness is authentic. It may be just that I'm in denial and actually being driven by it unconsciously. It might be possible that some of us just don't have any fear, and in that way we're fearless.

[20:43]

But I would suggest that anyone who can't find any should seek a non-violent, fearless person who is in touch with their fear to check them out. Don't find another person who doesn't have any. Find somebody who does have some and who's good at facing it. and tell them that you can't find any and you think there isn't any, because you might be dreaming, does that make sense? Of course, most of you don't have that problem of thinking you have none. And again, the people who ask me, can you tell me about recent fear? Again, that's nice, but really, there's one right now, I think. We've got one right now. Probably. One of the ways that I've been thinking about

[21:50]

trying to get close to frightened people, people who have embattled religiosity, is through the study of and interaction around different levels of understanding or different levels of wisdom. An example of this is that I heard on the radio last, I think it was Friday or Thursday, that there's a school board in Pennsylvania that has proposed that in the biology classes... Trevor, are you from Pennsylvania? Yeah, I am. I see the face. There's a student here whose face just became... A grimace came upon his face. He's from Pennsylvania. There's a town in Pennsylvania which has a school board, and this town is 80% Christian or something like that, and they have a school board, and the school board has decreed or whatever that in the biology classes that they tell the students, dash, warn the students that evolution is just a theory.

[23:16]

But the nuance and theory is that it's not really true. And then the other thing that they've decreed is that the students be taught that, I forgot how they put it, but taught that there is intelligent design involved in life, that they would teach them that. Now, I'm not a philosopher of science, but my understanding of theories in science is to some extent that they're proposed as a description of what is so, but also, and you can't really prove a theory is right. What you can do is you put a theory out there, and if it's a good theory, people will test it.

[24:21]

They'll be interested enough in it that they'll test it. You can prove a theory wrong, but if you test it and you don't prove it wrong, it doesn't prove it right. However, if a theory is interesting to people, a lot of people will test it. And when they test it and it doesn't get proved wrong, they keep testing it. And the more they test it, the more they find out about the nature of reality. So the process of testing helps people engage with life. And the good theory is one that gets people to engage with life, to get people to look at life, to study life, to experiment with life. And also to experiment with what we so-called call non-living things. But the more we experiment with non-living things, the more we find out how our life is related to non-living things, the nature of

[25:22]

the nature of atomic particles has now telling us something about the nature of human life. And of course, studying biology tells us something about spirituality. So the more we test these theories, the more we learn, but we never really prove the theories. So theories can't be proven true, but they can be proven false. Once they're proven false, They can be tested again and again to make sure that the refutation is correct, which still produces more study and more human inquiry. This is a good theory. Theory of evolution has been very much that way, that it's generated a lot of wholesome human inquiry. In that sense, it's a good theory. But to say it's just a theory, or it's a theory, could be seen as saying it's not true. But to say it's not true is missing the point of theory in science in the first place. And then to say, and this is a scientific kind of way of talking for me, then to say that to teach children that intelligent design is part of, to teach them in a science class that intelligent design is part of life,

[26:41]

as far as I don't know if there's been any research at all on that teaching or that theory. So to teach a theory which has no empirical basis is also not usually part of science. So that's some response to that. We could talk about it more, and I'd be happy to, but the Part of the reason for keeping this intelligent design thing is it's another way for saying, I guess, that there is a creator rather than a creative process. And it's another way, perhaps some people would say, of taking Genesis literally. So it would be fine to say, I would think, it would be fine in social studies to say that in the Christian religion, they teach, or in the Christian religion it says, in Genesis of the Bible, and also in the Jewish religion it says, in the Jewish Bible too, in Genesis, that God did some creative work.

[28:07]

It says that. That's the word. It does say that. That should be taught in a class on social studies or religion or anthropology or sociology. To teach it in science class, you would teach it if it was actually something that people had been scientifically studying. So no problem of teaching it in a religion class, for me. But there is a little bit of a problem with teaching in a science class because I don't think it's a scientific teaching. Or if it is, let's hear about the science. I think it's okay to tell people in school about religious teachings. But they could also teach the Buddhist tradition, also in the school, where in Buddhism we don't say that there's a primary cause of creation.

[29:14]

We say that the creative process is interdependent process. It's not coming from one source other than the interdependent process itself. And people may say, oh, that teaching is closer to scientific stuff, but still we could say it's taught in this religion that everything arises independent on things other than itself. That's a religious teaching from the Buddha. If it's useful for scientists and then they make up theories, they make up theories of that, but then they make up the theories so those theories can be tested empirically. The Buddhists could do that too, and the Christians could do that too. They could put up a theory of dependent co-origination and they could tell people how to test it. So we could make Buddhism into a religion where you could test either in your meditation or in a laboratory, you could test the Buddhist religious teachings. We could make Buddhism both a religion and a science if we wanted to.

[30:15]

And Christianity could also put out theories and invite people to test them. And then it would be a science and a religion. Part of what I am leading up to is that by looking at the teachings of different religions, there's an opportunity to be aware of our fears in relationship to those teachings, and be aware of our fears in relationship to the practitioners of those religions, and find a way, because we're aware of our fears and because we become fearless and patient, we have a way to approach these people, become intimate with them, and share our fearlessness with them around their religious teachings. If we're fearless and then we bring our studies of our religions and their religions, we study their religion and we study our religion, and by studying both religions and being fearless, we can share fearlessness with each other.

[31:33]

So you can share fearlessness which is good, but then in addition to that, you can find out about your own tradition or your own mind and other people's minds so that we can actually then test and manifest the fearlessness in our relationships. So, for example, again, in Genesis it says certain things. Also in Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, these texts say things. there's words. And in the Buddhist tradition, too, there's words. And basically, the first level of understanding, according to the Buddhist tradition, is by hearing the words of the teaching. And at least in the Catholic dimension of Christianity, some people can speak to Protestantism, and also in the Jewish tradition, but in the Catholic tradition also, and also I guess in the Bible, it says, first of all, that God communicates to the people, to the humans, with words.

[32:52]

It says that the process starts with words, with hearing. There may be some variation on that, but in the beginning There was what? There was the Word. And the Word was good? Is that right? And the Word was God. In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was God. And what else? And the Word was with God. And the Buddha... I think, yeah. And the Buddhist tradition, too, in a sense, you could say in the beginning there was a word. The Buddha spoke. Actually, the Buddha was silent first. But people didn't understand the silence. So they said, come on, say something.

[33:53]

So then there was worry. So in the Buddhist tradition and in the Catholic tradition, there's a very similar teaching about how you understand the word. And I'd be interested to hear from people who know about Islam and Judaism and Hinduism and any other religion, even if it's not major, if they have a similar presentation of understanding of the teaching of the tradition as what I will talk about. So in the Buddhist tradition, the first level of understanding of the teaching is called wisdom or understanding that arises through hearing. The next level of understanding is wisdom or insight or understanding that arises through thinking or reflecting.

[34:59]

And the next level of understanding is understanding that arises through becoming. Hearing the teaching, hearing the Word, thinking about the teaching or the Word, and becoming the Word as in, and the Word was God, and you become the Word. Those are three levels Three levels. And in the Catholic tradition, the first level is called, well, the level of the word or hearing or vocal prayer. So vocal prayer means you, or three dimensions of prayer. You pray and then you hear. You hear the word. The next level is called meditation, and the next level is called contemplation.

[36:06]

So these three levels seem to correspond. Again, very simply put, you hear the teaching. And the teaching you can hear in your own language, but you can also hear it by hearing a bird or hearing the wind. You can also hear it through your eyes by reading the text or seeing a person's face. You can see the teaching in a person's face or in written word. And it starts by seeing the face, or seeing the word, or hearing the word, or smelling the word. In other words, it comes in through the senses. In other words, we live originally in an isolated state.

[37:09]

We're not originally enlightened as to divine reality. And sometimes, somehow, we say, okay, I want to hear something. and we let God or the Buddha in. And we first let it in through the senses, and the main sense that's highlighted is the ear, the word. But some people first see it, a lot of people approach Zen anyway, in the West, through the eye, through reading. More and more people are approaching it through hearing, like hearing the big bell out there in the back. approach it through hearing, they hear the bell, and they come to Zen Center. We also sometimes hit, we also sometimes go like this. And go. This is how we teach sometimes. That's how Vandana comes that way sometimes.

[38:19]

That means meditate. One time one of our students got on a bus in San Francisco and got in a conversation with the bus driver and told him that they lived at Zen Center at the corner of Page and Laguna. And the bus driver says, oh yeah, that's that place that goes... He heard the Dharma as he was tearing the corner on his butt. It can come many ways. It first comes in through the ear, through the senses. That's how it starts. Between divine reality and a sensing being comes in through the senses, and ear is very important. Once it comes in and you get it and you check, did I get that right?

[39:33]

Is it like this? Is that right? You say, yeah, that's right. Or you say, is it like this? Is that it? You say, no, that's not it. How is it? It's like this. My knuckles may get worn out here. That close enough? Oh, yeah. One of them was a little bit too close. So you go back and forth until you get it straight, until you hear it enough so you actually hear it and you understand and you check with the source. You talk to the teacher, you check with the text, you talk to the fellow practitioners, and you get straight. You understand it. That's how you start. In both the Buddhist tradition and the Roman Catholic tradition, same start.

[40:38]

And again, maybe the Protestants would agree with that as the first step. The next step, where you think, we say in Buddhism you think or reflect on what you have understood through the ears. You think about it, you reflect on it. And in the Catholic tradition it's called the stage of meditation. And in the Catholic tradition they say in the stage of meditation you engage with the teaching. You've got it in, you've taken it in, and now you engage with it. And you bring your... You bring your intellect. You bring your intellect. You bring your emotions. You bring your history. You bring your life to the teaching. You're meditating now on what you have heard and understood, and now you confront it with your life. First of all, you just receive it, and your life is transformed.

[41:45]

Now you confront it with your life. There's another book is opened. You received the teaching. Now you open another book. You open the book of your life. And you confront the teaching with the book of your life. And you go back and forth and you struggle with the teaching that you've received. And you go back and forth and back and forth until you have a new understanding, a deeper understanding. And the next level is the level, which in Buddhist tradition is sometimes called the level of meditation, but I think the actual Sanskrit word is bhavana. It's the wisdom which comes from becoming the teaching, which you have heard, understood, and reflected on and understood more deeply, and now you become it. your body and mind become the teaching. For example, the teaching of non-violence, the teaching of compassion for all beings.

[42:50]

You become it. And in the Christian tradition, that level is called the level of contemplation. And one short way to typify this is the level of understanding which is silent love. In other words, you silently love the teaching. Again, you become it through... You're not really talking about it anymore or bringing your life to it. You're not listening to it or talking back to it. You're not struggling with it or arguing with it or analyzing it. You're just in a silent bond. You and the teaching, in both cases, are in a silent rapport. You don't have to say anything anymore. You don't need the words anymore. You have become the reality of the teachings. quite similar presentations of the evolution of deeper and deeper understanding. In a state of fear, it is possible still to have the first level of understanding of a tradition, to some extent.

[44:03]

And I think a lot of the people who are afraid, for example, made irrelevant by the power of scientific inquiry, these people who are afraid and not in touch with their fear, but infected by it, have an embattled attitude around their religion and want to defend it. If they could be met with fearlessness, We could talk to them about their own religion. Their own religious process, which is similar probably to the Buddhist process. In the Buddhist process, the first level is through hearing. And when you're understanding, and it is an authentic and essential level of understanding, the level of understanding that comes through hearing, When you understand at that level, when we understand at that level, even great bodhisattvas, when they understand at that level, they abide in the words.

[45:22]

In the first level of understanding you abide in the words. In the first level of understanding you take them literally. Taking the teaching literally is the first step. And fundamentalists are often criticized as taking the teaching literally. But taking the teaching literally is the first step in any religious tradition, also in science. If you don't take the teachings literally, you can't get started. The first step in the Buddhist tradition to realizing supreme enlightenment is to abide in the words and take them literally. However, at this level of abiding in the words of the teachings and taking them literally, at that level, that first level, we do not grasp their intent.

[46:32]

So you could hear the teachings of Buddhist tradition or the teachings of the Christian tradition. The first level, you abide in the words, you take them literally, but at that level, you do not understand the intention of them. You're receiving them, but you don't know what they mean. you don't know what they're given for. Sometimes teachings are given which are actually not really true, but they're given because they need to be given in order for the person to receive the more true later. But you don't know what the intention is. The next level is also you do not actualize the teachings. However, These are real teachings, perhaps, real religious teachings, real teachings about how to have peace and harmony among beings, how to have love in the world. In both the Christian and the Buddhist tradition, this is about manifesting compassion in the world. Right?

[47:36]

Isn't that what Jesus was teaching? Yes. And there's words. The first level of hearing we abide in those words, we take them literally, but we don't understand Jesus' intent, we don't understand Buddha's intent, and we don't actualize Buddha's teaching. However, because we have taken in, literally, these teachings, our understanding is in accord with liberation. But the way we understand it Although the object that we're taking in is in accord with the point of the whole teaching, the way we understand it is not in accord with liberation. The next level of understanding, where we kind of engage with the teaching, where we kind of, not exactly fight it, but we

[48:38]

We confront the teaching with our life, with our mind, with our body, with our energy, with our history, with our society. We bring all of our life to it and we struggle and dance with it until we really thoroughly understand it in all the ways we can interact with it, all the ways we can have input into it and get response from it, all these ways. This is the next level of understanding called meditation in the Christian or the Catholic and thinking or reflecting in Buddhist tradition. First using your ear, next using your mind. At that level we still abide or adhere to words, we still adhere to the words, but we don't take them literally. The next level of understanding, we don't take them literally. And because we don't take them literally, we grasp their intent and we actualize them.

[49:42]

And now our understanding are very concordant with liberation. However, we still don't comprehend the objects in the thoroughly liberated way. At the third level, where we actually become the teachings. At that level, we adhere to the words and we don't adhere to the words. We both adhere and do not adhere to the words. We take them literally. At the deepest level, we take them literally. At the deepest level, we take them literally. And we also do not adhere to them. take them literally without adhering, and also not take them literally. I mean, not adhere to them. We grasp their intent, we actualize them through the images which are the focus of our meditation, and we are completely concordant with liberation, and the way we see them is liberation itself.

[50:54]

So I have just put out before myself and shared with you a way for us to understand our own tradition at deeper and deeper levels, and a way for us to interact with other traditions And some of the participants in the other religions, other traditions, are in various stages of understanding. And if we are studying these stages of understanding, we can work with them, with their stages of understanding, and we can see and help them see the limits, just as we help ourselves see the limits of our understanding by understanding how the process of wisdom occurs. Whatever you know about any religious teaching, can you assess where you stand on that teaching?

[52:14]

Have you understood it at all? Is it the first level? Have you moved beyond the first level to the second level? If you say that some people are taking things literally, how about you? Are you taking things deeper than literally? And are you afraid of your own understanding and your own process? Probably. Are you afraid that you're at some stage or another? Probably. If you can bring your fear out about where you stand in terms of your own studies, then you can be fearless about your own studies. And if you can be fearless about your own studies, you can interact fearlessly with others about theirs. You can go up to somebody of another tradition and say, you know, what's your teaching? What's your practice? What word are you using to conduct your life?

[53:19]

Tell me about it. And you can ask them questions and test them to see where they stand in their own tradition. You can hear it. You can have them say it to you and you can be fearless about hearing their teachings. and understanding, asking them about their teachings. And as they tell you about their teachings, they will realize where they stand on their teachings. And then you can ask if they want feedback on their understanding of their teachings from a newcomer to their religion. In this tradition, by this tradition I mean this, I'm pointing to this tradition of the bodhisattva, the bodhisattvas are committed to make friends with the practitioners of all the other religions. They don't just stay in a little bodhisattva camp and talk to the people who like the teachings of Buddha.

[54:30]

They do talk to the people who like the teachings of Buddha. Yes, they do. but they are committed to talk and interact with intimately those who do not like the teachings of Buddha. And if they have a conversation with the people who don't like the teachings of Buddha, if those people like any teachings, they can become intimate with them. they can become skillful and knowledgeable about the other people's religions. It's no problem for the bodhisattva to go and learn about other religions and to learn about them with the people who are practicing them and liberate those people from their religion. But it isn't that you liberate them from their religion and get them over to be bound by the Buddhist religion. you already have become liberated from Buddhism.

[55:32]

That's why you have realized Buddhism. And when you realize Buddhism, you're liberated from Buddhism, and then you can go and be liberated in and through other religions. Fearlessness is key in studying your own tradition, and fearlessness is key in becoming free of your own tradition. And interacting with other traditions is key in realizing freedom from your own tradition and helping them realize freedom from their tradition. We have to liberate ourselves from Buddhism, from Zen Buddhism. But before we liberate ourselves from Zen Buddhism, we have to study Zen Buddhism. We have to learn it at the level of hearing and check to see, did we get this right?

[56:33]

Did I get it right? Good enough for now. Go ahead, try it again. We have to study Zen. and get it straight. Literally, literally straight. But when we get it literally straight, we don't understand what's the intent of this? What's the intent of this? So we have to engage that with our body. In other words, you have to hit the thing for years and years. Boom. Boom. You have to listen to people hear it. Boom. [...] You have to engage it. You have to confront it with your life. Like you hear the sound in here. I got a life, right? Boom. Boom. Boom. I got a life. I don't know. I don't have to do anything when I hear that. I can just listen to it. Somebody may say, you should go to Zendo now. You should go meditate. That thing's going. Is that what it means? It means that I should go to Zendo? Is that really what it means? I have a cold. I'm sick. I don't want to go. Really? Is that what it means?

[57:48]

That you don't have to go when you're sick? Are you sure that's what it means? I don't know. You hear that, boom, boom, boom. You hear that for 30, 40 years. And you watch what you do. And when you hear that, that's studying Zen to the next level. After a while, you understand. From hearing that sound and watching your life for 30 years, you understand the intent of that thing. You've grasped its actuality. And then you move even deeper. And you take that understanding and you sit with it for 30 more years. At this time, you're at least 61. I'm 61. And then you become it.

[58:49]

And when you become it, You abide in the word, you adhere to the words, and you don't adhere to the words. When you become it, you're liberated from it. And you're not liberated from it. Then you can go and interact with the others. As you've heard me say often, Suzuki Roshi said, the founder of this temple said, Buddhism is not one of those religions like Islam is. Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. They're not one of those. Buddhism is when Islam goes beyond Islam and Judaism is freed from Judaism. And Christianity is liberated from Christianity. And Hinduism drops away Hinduism. And Buddhism forgets about Buddhism.

[59:52]

Not Buddhism. But it's also, I think, not Buddhism. And if you realize that, then you have the opportunity now of bringing your liberation from Buddhism to other people and other traditions and helping them become liberated from their tradition. Hi, I'm from Buddhism. I'm here to liberate you from Christianity. But let me rephrase that. I recently became liberated from Buddhism. I'm now free of Buddhism. I've been studying for 60 years. I've become free of Buddhism. Now I'm ready to study Christianity. They say, welcome, brother. I finished the training program at Buddhism. I'm free of Buddhism. Now I'm ready for Christianity.

[60:52]

Here I am. So what do you have to teach me? And they'll teach you. And you'll study it with them. And you'll really study it with them. You'll learn the ropes and the loops and the ties and the knots. And you'll be good at it. And you'll bring the fearlessness that you realize through becoming free of Buddhism, you'll bring the fearlessness to Christianity. And fearlessness will pervade Christianity. And people will deepen their understanding of Christianity. And then you will become, together with them, liberated from Christianity. Then you move on to Judaism. And you move on to Hinduism. You move on to Islam. This is the bodhisattva path to enter all the different religious traditions and to help beings in those religious traditions become liberated from all self-clinging, which has been transformed into religious self-clinging. So religious people are particularly available,

[61:54]

Because they put their self-thinking right up there in their religion. So you can go and study their religion and actually you're studying them. So this is the bodhisattva path. But of course we also need patience because it takes a while to learn these traditions, right? I went to Turkey a few years ago. Right after 9-11 I went to Turkey. I was on a tour group Everybody else in the tour group dropped out. None of the other Americans in the tour group dropped out, so they canceled the tour group. People were scared to go to Turkey, I guess. So they said, but you can join a Dutch group. So I went with Dutch people. They weren't afraid to go for some reason. So I went to Turkey, and I saw... I didn't see any Islamic fundamentalists, although there might have been some.

[62:58]

Mostly I just saw these wonderful people practicing Islam. And I went to Rumi's hometown and I saw Rumi's tomb, you know, and I saw Rumi's calligraphy, It's just such a beautiful tradition. You can imagine, it would be very difficult if you entered Islam, it would be very difficult to get liberated from it because it's so beautiful and so easy to get attached to. And you could spend years and years and years getting more and more attached to it. learning more and more how wonderful it was. If you just look at the calligraphy, the calligraphy that comes from the Arabic Muslim culture, it's incredibly beautiful. It's not incredibly, it's so moving, the calligraphy. They don't have images of deities in the temples, but they have this calligraphy which is so beautiful, so enchanting, so encouraging that human beings can write like that.

[64:07]

Oh my God. I was walking down a street in a town called Bergama, which in Greco-Roman times was called Pergama. It was a great center of scholarship and culture. And the ruins of the city are still up in the hills. Incredibly beautiful, wonderfully beautiful, ancient Greek and Roman city. And I was down in the town, which is now a Greek town. I was walking down the street and I saw these children gathered around a kind of like cook pot. And the man was cooking them delicious fried cakes. And I got the impression he was giving them away to them.

[65:22]

And then I looked across the street and I saw all these children all over the hillside and I realized that it was Children's Day. It was Children's Day in Turkey that day. So they were giving children all kinds of special kindnesses. One of them being these delicious looking fried cakes. And I was standing kind of nearby kind of crouched down, thinking maybe they'd give me one. But then I felt like, no, it's just for the kids, so I moved on. And I went into this, this was out in front of a grocery store, and I went into the grocery store to buy some water. And as I was walking away from the water refrigerator with my water, the lady who owned the grocery store came over to me and gave me a big bag of these fried cakes. I never had that happen to me at an American grocery store.

[66:26]

Or I should say a grocery store in America, where the owner brings and gives you a huge bag of goodies for free. And then I just had this little bottle of water I was buying. I felt kind of like I should buy everything in a store. But I thought, this is a good religion. to give strangers gifts before they even ask. This is Islam too. This is good. This is a good religion. Now, what level of understanding does she have? And can I have fearlessness to interact with her? And it's not that easy. But there it is, the great challenge of our practice, to interact with these wonderful people in all other religions, and to ascertain what our understanding is and what their understanding is. with all beings to deepen our understanding of these teachings, to deepen our understanding of the Buddhist tradition, to deepen our understanding of Islam.

[67:37]

Even though now my study of Islam is just very much terribly on the surface, I could take some small teaching and perhaps take one small teaching and Take that one small teaching through these levels and then meet an Islamic person and talk to them about it and share them and show them I respect them and show them I'm not afraid of them if I'm not. Or tell them that I am afraid if I am and be not afraid to tell them I'm afraid. And then they can tell me that they're afraid of me and my tradition or America and we can share our fear and we can become free of fear together. This is possible. but it's a big job. I guess the question is, is it worth it? Do we care enough about realizing non-violence in this world to face our fear, to be patient with it, to study our tradition, to become free of it, and to approach those of different traditions or different understandings

[68:47]

and share our fear and help them to share our fear and together become free together. Yeah, I think fear is a big key thing. I think if we get our fear out in front, we'll want to do this. If we can face our fear, we're going to want to do this. But if we don't get our fear out in front, we're not going to want to do this, where it's going to be like, oh, it's too much, it's too big, it's too... But if we face our fear, then it's like things aren't too big anymore, because we faced a big one. Then being with people is not so difficult, if we did the really difficult thing first. Of meeting the fear we have of ourselves and others.

[69:55]

You did really well sitting on the hard floor all this time. Was it painful? A little bit of time. I'm sorry if this talk was too long or too short. Please forgive me. Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Jeff? I'm so interested in what you talked about.

[71:19]

you educate and teach wisdom to children in our educational system, how to impart that kind of wisdom. But how do we actually teach wisdom? What we teach in our educational systems, I don't think it's sufficient. We teach science, we teach reading and writing, How can we teach wisdom? There is, you know, just in terms of learning like mathematics, you could go through the same processes. There could be wisdom regarding mathematics. So, if a child is willing to learn anything, any verbal teaching, and you find yourself having the opportunity to interact with them if they have learned something or they haven't learned something let's say they haven't and they're willing to interact with you like my daughter actually is fairly good at math now she'll admit that relatively speaking she's pretty good

[73:09]

But when she was a kid, she would sometimes, I don't know, I would offer to help her with her math work, but she would tell me that she couldn't do it, that she wasn't good at math. And I think actually, though, she was afraid of not being good at math. She was afraid of her father not thinking she was smart or something. And I couldn't, I wasn't, I think at that time, aware enough of her fear around learning it. So if you can work with a child on learning anything and get in touch with their fear around, you know, learning about fear of not being smart or fear of you not liking them or fear of not being as good as other kids and you can help them and you can be with them learning anything. There is wisdom about mathematics is also counts as wisdom. Or you do, yeah.

[74:13]

So there is a wisdom element in correctly understanding some mathematical principle or teaching which is taught to them. Then if they were willing to do that, and also if you weren't afraid of them, or you weren't afraid of yourself, or you were afraid but you were working with that, and then they were also allowed to be afraid, and that was part of what you were sharing with each other, then you can move to a deeper level. around mathematics, this next level of how does this apply to your life? Mathematics is abstract to some extent, but you can still interact with it creatively. For example, the second level, you don't take the teaching of mathematics literally, and you can understand the intents. Mathematical teachings sometimes have an intent. Some teachings or some principles are partly intended to help study other principles. When you understand that they're not just ends in themselves but vehicles to understand other things, you understand the intent more.

[75:14]

And if they're willing to go through, for example, in mathematics or physics or music, any area that they're willing to go through, they can go through a wisdom process with because all phenomena have a nature which we can study. And then if they're willing to do that and they enjoyed that, you could move into other areas that may be more ethical areas. where they might be more afraid because I think children are more afraid of ethical principles because they sometimes get punished around them, but they don't get punished as much around math maybe as they do around ethics. Then you can maybe move into ethical areas and then spiritual areas. But the thing is that they're enjoying it. And that you can see the wisdom process going in social phenomena, mathematical phenomena, physical phenomena, biological phenomena, musical phenomena. Any area that you can do that, you can take them into deeper levels. And the more fluent they get, also learning languages. They're afraid, to some extent afraid, just like we adults are afraid sometimes.

[76:19]

It's embarrassing to mispronounce things, to get the grammar wrong, and sometimes people even laugh at us when we make mistakes, which is not necessarily mean, it's just sometimes we say funny stuff, make funny mistakes, but we have to be able to deal with our fear of looking awkward or whatever. So basically, if we're in touch with our fear and working with our fear, we can help other people be in touch with their fear that they have around learning processes, and this way we can work on wisdom together. Thank you very much for your talk today, so conducive to having people in the homes that we're living today. But I'd like to open the subject that I went to see a movie called The Motorcycle Diary, and it's about the life of Che Guevara just one year after he got out of the university.

[77:21]

He was a medical student. And it's just a movie of adventure, but you see how Che Guevara starts getting a feeling or understanding of different social imbalances. Then after the movie, I decided to check the internet to know more about Che Guevara. And it was just unbelievable. It went to Spanish or Italian or German, any language, and it was thousands of pages. And I said, wow, this guy became to be an icon that represented a sector of this world. And then I said to myself, well, but this man, you know, he promoted violence. And then I said to myself, well, we are defendants of all beings.

[78:28]

They've got to teach the Che Guevara. They've got to teach the Dalai Lama. So we are all interconnected. And I said to myself, you know, we cannot judge these people that are promoting violence because they are sort of doing... values in the world or something, something they're doing. So I got a little bit confused about my, my concept of non-violence and peacefulness and sort of, sort of I found myself being obsessed with these people that are fighting in this world without the moods of peacefulness, you know, they go with violence. So I want to talk about that. Well, it sounds like, my impression is you had kind of a non-violent reaction to the violence.

[79:33]

you don't sound particularly violent right now. You don't look violent. You look kind of non-violent. And you were talking about those people who seem to be balancing something. But you seem to be balancing the violence. If we get to a place where there's not enough violence, maybe you should start being violent. That might happen, you know, like super non-violent situation, you feel like there's too much non-violence here. You might go, you know, and people might say, that's enough, thank you. So, there was a show on NPR also last Friday, I think, and it took place in a gun shop in Dallas, Texas.

[80:42]

where they sell these assault weapons. Where people can go, like, where you and I can go and buy, for $2,000, a gun where you can actually shoot things at 100 yards, quite accurately, without, you know, because you just point the gun at the thing. But also, So you can shoot like many rounds in a few seconds. And also tremendous power. So the bullets go through walls. So American civilians can buy guns like that. But the show, the radio show was kind of non-violent. It wasn't putting these people down.

[81:46]

It's just putting this out there in a nonviolent way, letting people know that Americans can buy these weapons which American soldiers use. American soldiers use these weapons and therefore they're very effective because they can blow away anything. And now we know that our people in this country can buy these weapons and have them in their house and in their car. So now we have something to be afraid of. Every time you see a truck, a pickup truck, you know they might have one of those weapons in the back seat. So we have some fear to work with. And then if we're fearless, we can go interact with the truck drivers. Say, what kind of gun you got in the back there? And they can tell you and say, wow, you showed me how it works.

[82:50]

And maybe we can make friends with the owners of the guns. Maybe they'll let us borrow them. So I think I appreciate your nonviolent response to violence. And I think we need more of that kind of response in this world. I think we need more non-violent being to balance the violence. The violence seems to be overly represented. But I could be wrong. I don't want to be... I don't really know for sure, but In this room, the violence seems to be not overly represented, but it's not underrepresented. I'm here representing violence enough, I think.

[83:54]

There's a few other people that are a little bit violent in here. Aren't there? Yeah, this one. Joni is a little bit violent. Yes, sir. What's your name? Marvin, yes. Yes. What if I perceived somebody who has been taught to be violent? What if I perceived that their experiences were a question of intrusion or invasion?

[85:06]

And I decided to yell at them. they're going to attack me. And I liberated the point that I can say the reality is I have to deal with it. That person is ready to react to my reflection. And I don't believe that word I've been Ignoring the others, or accepting and responding. But what if the person is caring? And then they're included. Because if they're fearless, then they only realize that they're included. Then they take on the truth, and they're included.

[86:16]

If I think, if I see someone and I feel fear of them, then before I do anything, before I take any initiative, I've got something to work on in myself. If I can work on my own fear with this person, or fear of this person, and anybody can be violent. When I look at people, I don't say, this person's not going to be violent with me. Like I have this guy visiting me right now, he's up at my house. He's a small person, but he is violent with me. He often, when he sees me, he goes, and I say, don't hit, don't hit. But he likes to hit me, and he's barely restraining himself from kicking me and biting me and punching me and throwing things at me.

[87:46]

I say, don't throw that at me, it will hurt me. I don't trust that this person will not be violent, this person who is visiting me right now, who I love dearly, for whom I will give my life if necessary. He's violent. I watch him carefully. Because at any moment he might attack me. This person. I was telling somebody recently, just this morning, I was saying, He's having a little trouble making it through the night without urinating in his bed. So his mother asked me to get him up when I got up for Zazen this morning. So it's four o'clock in the morning this morning. I went in and picked him up. I carried him into the toilet, stood him up in front of the toilet and said, pee. And he peed. And then I was going to carry him back, but he actually walked back. And then he got in his bed. But it was very... I was carrying this potentially violent person

[88:48]

in my arms, and it was very sweet and very dear. And the likelihood of him attacking me when he's half asleep is less than when he's fully aroused. But still, you never know. So I think the principle that I'm saying here is that if you think probably the person's going to attack you if you get near them, then if you think it's quite likely, you probably should be extremely cautious. If you think it's fairly likely, you need to be less cautious. But in any case, everybody you interact with is dangerous. Everybody you interact with could be violent. We need to learn how to be close to violent people, even though there's some possibility that they will attack us. Now, violent people aren't attacking people all the time. They wouldn't be quite as dangerous if they were doing it all the time.

[89:51]

So anyway, how do I get close to these violent people and in a way that's not harmful to me or them? I think my learning how to do that skillfully is part of me becoming fearless, but also getting in touch with my fear of them is part of me being skillful. So the skillfulness comes with the fearlessness, and the fearlessness comes with the skillfulness of working with violence.

[90:19]

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