Okay, so this class is called Entering Buddha's Way, and there are endless ways, endless doors to Buddha's Way. I'm just going to talk about one, sort of. And it's a formal way of entering the Buddhist path. It's a bodhisattva initiation into the Buddhist path, and by a ceremony. Yes? Can't hear me? Would you mind coming closer? Can you hear me, Dave? Yeah. It's hard to hear? Okay, I notice my voice is not going to go very far. Not tonight.

[01:05]

No amplifier except more air. So, one of the ways, a formal way of entering Buddha's way is a bodhisattva initiation ceremony, which is a ceremony where one receives the bodhisattva precepts, the sixteen bodhisattva precepts. This way is practiced in a number of different forms of Buddhism, this bodhisattva initiation ceremony as a way of entering Buddhist practice. So I will teach you a little bit about this ceremony and teach you certain parts of this ceremony so that you can enter, at least in your mind, you can enter through this ceremony. And some of you actually have done this ceremony already formally. I'll tell you about the full-scale ceremony.

[02:14]

and the elements in it. The name of the ceremony actually is Attaining the Way. That's the name of the ceremony, Attaining the Way, in Japanese, tokudo. toku, to attain, do, the way. And the way means enlightenment. So it's a ceremony of attaining enlightenment. And some of the people who are in this room who've done the ceremony might be thinking, I did that ceremony. Did I attain enlightenment? You did, yeah. Yeah. when you enter into the ceremony and receive the precepts, you actually become on a par, basically on a par with a greatly enlightened being. And then you maybe spend many years of practice trying to understand how that's so.

[03:27]

The first element in the ceremony is... Well, actually, I didn't mean to, I wouldn't think of saying this, but the first element in the ceremony happens before the ceremony, and that is that you ask to receive the precepts. You're asked to receive the teaching. You go to some teacher who has had these precepts transmitted to her, and you ask her or him, would you please give me these precepts? And then they say, eventually they say, yes. That actually happens. That's the beginning of the ceremony, is you ask to receive the teachings of the Buddha. And again, this is kind of surprising me, but I didn't expect to ask you this, but you came into this room tonight, and I wondered, did you come here to receive the teachings of Buddha?

[04:32]

Or some of you weren't expecting that. Do you want to receive the teachings of Buddha? Do you want to ask to receive the teachings of Buddha? Or is that too much? It's too much, huh? What? Well, you know, I can go one, two, three, and then everybody can ask at once. We could have a standard phrase like, may I receive the teachings of Buddha? Okay, and then if you don't want to say it, I won't hold it against you. One, two, three. May I pursue the teaching of the Buddha? Yes, you may. Pretty good, huh? So that's kind of the beginning of the ceremony. I didn't expect the ceremony to happen tonight. I thought I was just going to talk about it, but actually you just started the ceremony in a sense. Next thing that one does is, for the full ceremony actually...

[05:38]

is you can study the precepts. So you're also doing that in a sense because you're in this class and you learn about the precepts. So you're doing part of what it usually precedes the ceremony is some studying of the precepts which you receive. Another thing that often happens is that people in the full ceremony, they sew a robe like this one I have on. It's a Buddhist robe made according to an ancient procedure, ancient form. Do you want to hear about it? In the time of the Buddha Shakyamuni in India, in his own practice prior to attaining the way himself, He wandered around basically nude and didn't take baths and ate almost nothing.

[06:46]

He was like an extreme ascetic for a number of years. He got so close to death. Well, he got very close to death. He was eating like a sesame seed a day for long periods of time and water. he finally realized after many years and really becoming like a champion ascetic that this was not giving him the enlightenment which he sought. So he started to take a little bit to eat, drank a little milk, and that seemed to be actually more appropriate to the practice. which leads to one of the basic principles of Buddhism that you eat. One of the principles of Buddhism, you eat food. The Buddha way, we eat.

[07:46]

We don't like, you know, kind of like up to some kind of like cloud and not eat. You eat before enlightenment and after, but not necessarily during. So the Buddha ate before enlightenment and the Buddha ate after he understood ultimate truth and was freed from all suffering and became a great teacher. He kept eating. So he ate a little bit and he also started to clean up a little bit and wear a little bit of clothes after he got enlightened. And he recommended to his students that they also wear some clothes. In India in those days, it was okay for ascetics to not wear clothes. It was considered cool for the religious people to be naked and dirty and emaciated. People felt fine about that. But he had his students eat a little bit, keep clean, and wear clothes. But not real fancy clothes, just kind of like something decent.

[08:50]

And one story goes that one day, one of Buddha's disciples, who was a king, saw some very dignified-looking meditator doing walking meditation. and he went over to the person, and because he was a student of the Buddha, he thought this was one of Buddha's disciples, so he bowed to the person. He found out it wasn't one of Buddha's disciples and felt a little embarrassed. So he went to the Buddha and he said, Sir, would you please have your people wear a uniform so I can, you know, tell who's who, so I can pay my respects to your students, and So Buddha said, okay. So then he was thinking, what kind of a uniform should we wear? We wear clothes, but what style? So he was walking along with his main student, not his main student, but his attendant.

[09:54]

They were walking along and he looked at a rice pad and he said, that would be a good design for our clothing. So they designed their robe on the pattern of a rice field. So if you look at this, it's hard for you to see, but if you came up close, you can see that it looks kind of like a rice paddy. So what they could do is they could make their robes out of just discarded cloth and then cut the cloth up into little squares, rectangles, and patch it together in a shape that looked like a rice field. So anyway, as part of going to the ceremony, one makes and receives a traditional religious garment. This is a small one. And sometimes we make larger ones that wrap all around like a toga. Anyway, that's part of the preparation for the ceremony. When the ceremony actually starts,

[10:55]

The first part of the ceremony is that the person who is going to receive these teachings pays homage to the enlightened beings living and of ancient times. Pays homage. Pays homage means, homage has an element of praise in it, but homage also means that you kind of align yourself with somebody. So you can pay somebody your respects or pay somebody your praise, but you might not want to be like them. Like you might say, you might think, oh, so-and-so is really a great pianist, and I praise him, but I don't want to be a pianist. Or a man might look at a woman and praise her, but not want to be a woman. But maybe if she was a religious teacher, he might want to align with her or pay his homage to her by wanting to be like her.

[12:05]

So when you pay homage, you kind of want to join this person's way of life or be like them in some aspect of their life, be like their art, their science, their religion. So the first part of the ceremony is you pay homage to the enlightened ones. The next part of the ceremony is an invocation where the preceptor and the person who's receiving the precepts and the whole assembly invoke, call up the presence of the enlightened beings, the compassionate beings, the wise beings throughout time and space. We invoke their presence and their compassion to sustain the ceremony. to create a big context for this receiving of the teaching. Okay? The next part of the ceremony is renunciation.

[13:08]

And that's the part I want to talk about tonight, and maybe it'll take more than tonight, but start talking about this phase of the ceremony of renunciation. this phase of entering Buddha's Way called renunciation. So first of all, what does renunciation mean? The English word means basically to give up, let go. Also means to reject, or disown, or abandon. I think that the word reject may be a little strong in the Buddhist context, but all the other words I think are pretty good. To let go, some kind of letting go, giving up, disowning, abandoning.

[14:18]

So this first kind of radical move after requesting, aligning and invoking compassion, wisdom and enlightenment, now we give up something. We let go of something. What do we give up? What do we let go? Well, I guess if this is entering into Buddha's way, I guess we'd let go of... If this is entering into being awake, the way of being awake, maybe we'd let go of being asleep. If this is the way of truth, then maybe we'd let go of falseness. If this is the way of enlightenment, maybe we'd let go of delusion.

[15:26]

What kind of delusion? Well, maybe the delusion that we're here kind of all by ourselves, separate from other beings, separate from some other beings anyway, maybe separate from all other beings, actually. Maybe we actually think we're separate from everybody who's not us. and everything that's not us. And maybe some of the things we feel separate from, we think we need, so we're attached to them. It's pretty hard actually to let go of this very deep delusion that we're separate and that we exist separately. It's pretty hard just to let go of that really. In some ways what's easier is to let go of some of the consequences of that, or to at least commit yourself to letting go of some of the consequences of feeling isolated and independent of other beings.

[16:52]

Consequences of feeling separate are what? What are some of the consequences of feeling separate? What are some of the consequences of feeling isolated? Huh? What are some of the consequences of feeling isolated and lonely? Huh? Suffering. What are some of the... And when you're suffering and you're isolated and you're lonely, then what are some of the things you might do? Huh? Vote? Vote Republican? Huh? Huh? You also might vote Democrat. Laura says get greedy. Drink alcohol or drink too much of something else. Sing the blues. Hmm?

[17:57]

Hmm? have anxiety so having anxiety having anxiety having sadness having isolation and anxiety go together when you're isolated you feel you're worried about you're threatened by the other and you're that's painful so feeling all this pain and isolation and loneliness and anxiety and separation What do you do? You get greedy. You attach to things to defend yourself. Another thing you can do is you can intake certain kinds of materials to make yourself dull and sleepy so you won't notice or you won't feel the pain of believing that you're separate. Matter of fact, some drugs actually like almost take away your ability to feel separate from anything so that they take away the anxiety.

[18:58]

But without these kinds of painkillers or pain distractors, and I'll get into some of the things we do to distract ourselves from the situation. Without that, we tend to like to do something, like we try to use power and get control of the situation. And we attach to certain things which we think will protect us or assuage this pain, this sense of isolation. So what we give up is we give up using power. We give up attachment. we give up trying to control. That's what we renounce. And indirectly, then, we renounce delusion.

[20:07]

We do many things to try to control. Again, we We take things to numb ourselves. We manipulate our situation so that we feel less pain. We try to remember things in the past. We try to control and predict things in the future. We do many things. And renunciation is to give up all those things which we do to take care of the self which we think is separated. So when we feel separated, we feel terrible, and then we do things to take care of this person who feels terrible, which compounds the situation.

[21:15]

Because we're concerned with ourselves, we feel anxious. And then because we feel anxious, we do various things to take care of this person who's separate. So we keep reinforcing the sense of separation and keep deepening the belief that we're separate and keep perpetuating the source of the anxiety and the pain. The renunciation is to renounce all those things which come from self-concern and are maintaining self-concern. It's to let go of whatever you're holding on to. It doesn't mean that the thing goes away. Like if you let go of your teeth, they don't fall out of your mouth. If you let go of your body, it doesn't like leave the planet or fall through the floor.

[22:23]

If you let go of your values, they don't evaporate or turn upside down. If you let go of your husband or wife, they don't leave town. If you let go of your children, they don't run away. Letting go doesn't really have that much effect on the objects of your attachment. Letting go of control doesn't make things less under control. It doesn't really change the level of anxiety right away by changing the threat. It changes the level of anxiety by letting go of the source of the anxiety.

[23:41]

Self-concern, when you let go of it, the anxiety goes away. And you are basically enlightened on the spot. As soon as you let go of self-concern, you're liberated immediately. So at the beginning of the ceremony, after sort of like, you know, getting everybody together, paying your respects, aligning yourself with the program, as soon as you then practice renunciation, you have realized the way. You're immediately a successful disciple of the Buddha. There's more to the program, but basically you're sort of already in the door and well established in the way.

[24:47]

Recently at Green Gulch I've been studying a Zen story, and the Zen story goes like this. It's about two very, very famous Zen masters. One of them goes to visit the other one. Well, I'll just tell you the whole story. It's not that long. One of them, his name is Zhao Zhou. And Zhao Zhou is... like I say, one of the most amazing Zen teachers of all time. He lived to be 120. And even when he was a very old man, he was wandering around visiting other teachers. And so one time he was wandering in a neighborhood where there was a mountain, and the name of the mountain was Todzu.

[25:56]

And on that mountain there lived a Zen master, who was living as a hermit. He was a new graduate from the Zen training program. He was a master, but he was just like sitting out in the woods waiting for people to find him. And people were gradually finding out about him. They called him the hermit of Todza, or they called him Todza, because he lived on Todza, and he was like the happening thing on Todza. So Jiaojiao was walking around near Todzi, the Mount Todzi, and he saw this guy walk by. And he said, hmm. So he asked somebody nearby, he said, is that Todzi? Is that the master of Todzi? And the person said, yeah. So then he went over to Todzi and he said, are you Todzi, the master of Todzi? And Todzi said, would you give me some money to buy salt and tea? And Zhao Zhou, I don't know what Zhao Zhou did in terms of the money thing, but anyway, Zhao Zhou went up onto Tozi and made himself a little campsite and waited for Tozi to come back to his hermitage.

[27:17]

And when Tozi came back, he was carrying some oil, you know, that he had gotten in the town or something. And... Zhaozhou said to Tozi, he said, I've heard for a long time about this guy named Tozi, but now all I see is an old man carrying oil. And Zhaozhou said, Oh, no, then Toadza said, you only see an old man carrying oil. You don't see Toadza. And Jojo says, what is Toadza, or who is Toadza? And Toadza raised the oil and said, oil, oil. And Jojo said, after going through the great death, how is it?

[28:21]

And Toda says, �You shouldn't go in the dark. You should arrive in daylight.� I tell this story because Jaojo's question is, �After the great death, how is it?� The great death is when you really have accomplished and realized renunciation, after you let go, then you can accept reality. That's called the great death. And after the great death, then there's a great birth. It's the birth of great compassion. So Jaojo was asking this master, one master was asking the other one, after the great death, after renunciation is fully realized, what is great compassion like?

[29:23]

How is great compassion? Actually, they had been practicing what it's like after the great death prior to the question. That's what it's like after renunciation. It's like you're wandering around interested in people and you go up and you say to them, you know, are you Laura? And then you say, can I have some lettuce? And then I see you later, you know, eating your lettuce and I say, I've heard of Laura for a long time, but now all I see is a young woman eating lettuce and you tell me a thing or two. In other words, after the great renunciation, things aren't like so strange. It's just that there is this, everything's compassion. It's just that these people are really interested in each other because they understand that they're talking to themselves all day long.

[30:30]

That when they grow up to somebody else, they don't think of somebody else anymore. They see everybody in the universe as their life because they let go of the delusion that they're separate. And they let go of holding onto those things which keep maintaining this sense of separation. We've got to let go of our grip on the cliff, and then we can accept. Most people are walking around all day long holding onto the cliff. They think they're on a cliff. Now, they're not usually that conscious of it, but you ask them to let go, and then they act like they're on a cliff. Like you say, would you please take your clothes off? And suddenly, it's like, well, geez, what happened then?

[31:33]

We're at the airport. You know, people will be shocked. I'll get arrested. I'll be in the newspaper. People at my church will think I'm strange. Whatever, you know. Most people are walking on, holding on for dear life because they think if they let go, they'd be all done. It's not true. If you let go, you find out it's really fine. When you let go, then you really let go. You're liberated from the thing you're worried about, the thing that's causing your worry and your anxiety. So I'm telling you, and I could get more dramatic about how great it is to let go of everything you're attached to.

[32:34]

Got a car? Got a car? got a house, have a family, have a bank account, have a body, have a state of mind, have some friends. Whatever you've got, anything that you're attached to, let go of it. Actually letting go is renunciation. and that is liberation immediately. How do we get to the place where we practice that other than somebody telling us over and over how good it is? In the ceremony that we do, people formally practice renunciation. The way we formally do it is for a layperson, we make a gesture of cutting a little bit of their hair.

[33:35]

And for a priest, we cut it all, giving them what my teacher called the ultimate haircut. That is a formal renunciation. It's a ceremonial renunciation. And after that, if you shave all your hair, but even if you shave a little, then you kind of wonder, you know, what is actual renunciation? it's not just cutting my hair and for some priests they understand that the renunciation means for example that they give up certain possessions and that they give up sexual intercourse but that is a physical renunciation those are physical renunciations but does the person in their heart really let go of those things The key thing is to let go actually in your heart that you're not attached to sexuality, to your sexuality.

[34:45]

You have sexuality, but you're not attached to it. You're not trying to control it. You have hair, well, some people have hair, but you're not trying to control it. When you cut it, you don't cut it to make it short. You cut it to say, I'm not trying to control anymore. I'm not attached to this hair. Having my hair like this reminds me that I'm trying to practice non-attachment. Non-attachment is being Buddha. How are we going to get ourselves to a place where we really want to let go of our attachments? or really want to let go of being concerned about ourself. How are we going to get to that place? Well, one of the main ways to get there is by practicing patience.

[35:46]

Now, what do you practice patience about? Well, you practice patience with suffering. Where do you get the suffering? It comes with your attachment. If you're attached to anything, you suffer. If you're attached to yourself, you suffer a lot. If you're attached to yourself, you're anxious, you're in pain. If you're concerned about what's going to happen to you and you're attached to yourself as an independent person, you're anxious. So you got the pain. Don't worry about that. How are you going to want to let go of what's... How are you going to want to let go, which is really the main condition for that pain? Well, you have to face the pain, but not just face it like, oh, jeez, you know, but face it patiently.

[36:53]

Not bang your head against the pain or, you know, bite your lip. Don't grin and bear it. No. Practice patience where it means you develop the capacity to feel it completely. Or, take that back, you develop the capacity to feel it from the center of the experience. You feel just the now part of the anxiety. just the now part of the pain which arises based on our delusion, based on our delusion and our attachments to ourself. And if we practice that kind of patience, that kind of presence, sitting in the middle of our ignorance, of the pain of our ignorance,

[38:06]

Sitting there, the mind starts to become softer. It's kind of like you marinate your mind. It starts to become more tender. You're feeling the pain. You're not wiggling. You're not fighting back. You're not banging your head into it. You're not wallowing in it. You're just sitting there quietly in the middle of the pain of being a person who has some attachment to personal independent existence. I should say independent personal existence. Personal is okay. It's the independent part that causes the anxiety. It's the independent part that makes us feel threatened. Okay? So you practice patience and your mind starts to get soft. You develop what's called a soft, pliable mind.

[39:13]

And this mind is the mind in which the wish the actual wish and willingness to let go starts to grow up. So in the ceremony, you let a little bit of your hair be cut off or a lot of your hair be cut off. You make a commitment to practice renunciation. And if you can practice it in the ceremony, then right away you're liberated. But if you haven't been able to completely do it in the ceremony, then after the ceremony you keep working on it from then on. You keep working on practicing patience so that the mind, the attitude, the heart which is willing to let go of attachment to your body and mind, that willingness, that wish gets stronger and stronger until somehow you actually let go.

[40:19]

There is actually a letting go. a great death. And when you let go of all this attachment and experience that very nice release from your suffering, you naturally come back to life as a compassionate person, as a bodhisattva who is dedicated to the welfare of others. So walking the path of the bodhisattva, the way is accomplished in the state of renunciation. Patience, presence, courage, these are the things that promote renunciation. and develop the mind of renunciation to actually be the state of renunciation.

[41:25]

What hinders renunciation? Distracting yourself from your pain by being busy, by looking at things which take your mind away from what's going on with you, By ingesting food or drugs that numb you to it. By being lazy in the sense of, you know, inertia, like you just want to stay in the state you're in. You're resisting change and activity. The patience, when you practice patience, the energy that was previously going into like doing various things to distract yourself, the various things to push the pain away or dull the pain, all that activity, all that energy that's not being used for that purpose now is available to move, to act.

[42:43]

to be courageous. Vice versa, if you do various things which distract you from your pain, that energy is not available. So it's easy to be inert. It's easy to resist the change which you want to make in your life. But you don't have much energy because you're spending so much time fighting the consequences of delusion. Whereas in practicing patience, you're not fighting them anymore. As a matter of fact, you're seeing them and you're seeing the pain and you're seeing the source of the pain, so you want to let go of the source of the pain. And of course you already have let go of the distraction from the pain and the distraction from the source of the pain. And there's many activities which we can use to distract ourselves.

[43:51]

The activities themselves are not the bad guys. Shopping, watching television, going to movies, distractions. you have to look and see what it can you watch television and stay in touch with yourself most people probably can't now if you're really enlightened you probably can but why don't you like do that first first become thoroughly enlightened and greatly compassionate and then see if you can watch television without distracting yourself can you watch a movie without getting distracted well it depends on the movie to some extent, but also depends on your attitude. Are you trying to distract yourself? When you take a walk, are you trying to distract yourself? When you do something kind, are you trying to distract yourself? Like you're feeling anxious, you know? So you're doing something to make yourself feel like, hey, I'm not, you know, you're feeling anxious about maybe feeling like you're unworthy or you have a meaningless life.

[45:01]

So do something meaningful that you don't have to be threatened by that. But still, you know, if you feel separate, you're always kind of like feeling threatened because there's something meaningless about being separate. It doesn't make sense that you're separate. You know it doesn't. So you're kind of like, you wonder when you're going to get caught for it. You're already caught. That's anxiety. So you check it out. Are you doing anything to distract yourself from that? If so, you're not practicing patience. If you feel it, then you practice patience. That's one of the things why we have this practice of sitting. Because when you sit, at least in most meditation halls, there isn't that much offered to you to distract you. Like, you know, there's a wall, there's a floor.

[46:05]

You know, if you look at the floor long enough, you can start seeing nice little shows down there. But, you know, it takes a while. There isn't that much. You come in, you know, like you don't have a lot of food in your stomach, shouldn't eat a lot of food before you sit. You're not starving, but you're also not in a dull stupor from overeating. You don't come in on drugs. When I first started practicing Zen, a lot of people came to the Zen Center on drugs. Sitting in meditation on LSD and so on is really interesting. Not that painful. But just to be with yourself, with no distractions, you start to notice that you're anxious. Actually, in this room one time, I was in a yoga class, and I was lying on the floor in what's called the corpse pose. It's very comfortable, you know. easy to be distracted in the cart-throwers from your suffering. Matter of fact, the person teaching the class was like an expert in how to, like, be comfortable doing various restorative poses.

[47:10]

But she said, she said, All you have to do is stay long enough in any yoga pose and you will, and I thought she was going to say, experience extreme bliss or, you know, union with Brahma. But she said, if you stay long enough in any yoga posture, you will see that you will realize that you're uncomfortable. that does pretty good. For a yoga teacher to say that's pretty good. Usually you expect them to say, well, if you stay long enough in any of these postures, then you'll really be happy because these postures are really good for you, right? No, she said, you'll be, if you stay long enough, you realize your basic human condition. You're uncomfortable because you don't understand reality.

[48:14]

And if you don't understand reality and you stay in yoga posture for a long time, you'll notice that you don't understand. And you'll notice you're uncomfortable. You'll notice you don't understand your body and mind. So these postures, if you do them for a long time, you stop running away from yourself. Stop running away from yourself. You get to see how you understand yourself. And until you understand yourself correctly, you're going to be uncomfortable. Practice patience with that discomfort. Really get good at patience. Stop running away. Settle with the pain. And you're going to want to drop. your attachment to this view of yourself which is causing you suffering. And you... If you want to and you're willing long enough, you will... I should take it away. It's not that you will. It will be dropped. You can't drop it, but it will drop.

[49:15]

It will drop. Because it's just propped up there by your energy anyway. It's just your own view. It will drop. And when it drops, then you've realized the actuality of renunciation. And then you're ready to move on to the next phase of the ceremony. So that's quite a bit. Do you have some questions about this? First you started talking about your concern for yourself, and then you were talking about having patients and the way you work, your pain, and I'm wondering what's the difference between those two, because in some ways the language can, in my mind, be the same thing.

[50:34]

Say it again please. Do you want me to try? I'm not better. Just the same thing over. Once more time. One more time. So it can be exactly the same. There was a phrase towards the beginning when we talked about relaxation. Letting go of self-concern. Self-concern. Yes. And then... Giving up self-concern. Right. Yes. And I guess I'm wondering what that means. Because it's always that I see that self-concern as being the same thing as having patients or being with people. What I mean by patience is that you sit in the middle of your pain. How is that not self-concern? The pain arises from self-concern, but facing what's happening, I don't see that as self-concern.

[51:50]

Just to face reality, I don't see that as self-concern. In other words, I think somebody who has completely... In other words, an awakened person, someone who has let go of self-concern, they can see things clearly that you can't see when you're holding on to something that doesn't really exist. If you hold on, if you're holding on to the belief that you're independent, you're holding on to an untruth. You're not independent. As long as you're holding on to your independence, you can't see your interdependence. It's like, what is it like? It's like your heart is really, you know, you really have a great compassionate heart. But if you're afraid of what's going to happen to you, if you would feel that, and you tighten up enough, you cannot feel that openness. You know, if you clench hard enough on yourself, you can actually, like, obscure this feeling of wanting to embrace all beings.

[52:55]

Do you know what I mean? No? Didn't make sense, huh? So if you're holding on to your belief that you're independent and you're suffering because of that, and you just face the suffering, that would be the same thing that you would do if you weren't holding on. If you had no self-concern, you also could just look at whatever suffering was going on. So just facing your suffering is not necessarily being attached. Now, you could be attached still and face your suffering. So if you weren't attached and you were free and you saw some suffering, you would just face it. You would just look at it. You'd be patient with it. And most people that are self-concerned and are self-attached, they have trouble facing their suffering.

[54:05]

They tend to wiggle with it or try to obscure it or distract themselves from it. They think that would be a good thing to do for themselves. It actually isn't, but because they have self-concern, they can't see what's good. In other words, sometimes they can't see that patience would be good for them. To do something good for yourself doesn't have to come from self-concern. In fact, many of the things we do based on self-concern are not good for us. Like, for example, to take care of your teeth is a good idea, I think. Especially if you're a good person, it's nice for you to have teeth so you can keep chewing and live longer and help people. But you can brush your teeth more effectively, more appropriately, more skillfully if you're not concerned about your teeth. You're not attached to them. If you're attached to your teeth, you don't take a good care of them as you do if you're not attached.

[55:07]

If you're attached to your teeth, it's much more tiring to brush them than if you're not. Being attached to yourself and take care of yourself, it's much harder work. That make sense? So I see just facing your suffering and practicing patience as a good thing to do for yourself. It's the best way to be with your pain. But not only that, but the patience sets up the opening to not only the pain, but the opening to reality. As you open your heart, open your mind, open your body to your pain, you also start to open to reality. And one of the ways you start to open to reality is you open to the wish, to the willingness to stop holding on to delusion. It takes courage to face the pain, and patience is then actually settled into facing the pain.

[56:14]

And then as you settle into facing the pain, the energies you're using to distract yourself are available then for even more courage. So you develop courage and patience together. And the two together make it so that you can open and participate with reality, namely that you're an interdependent being. And you'll be okay. An interdependent being will be fine. It won't be terrible to be interdependent. It'll be good to realize that. Okay? Did I make sense to you? Does that make sense to other people too? Yes. What's your name again? Pat. Pat. What state are we in? Okay. It sounds to me as if you're saying, don't do things to take care of yourself, to nurture yourself, because that would be distracting.

[57:34]

If you're nurturing yourself to distract yourself, okay I'm saying yeah I'm saying I'm saying that's not patience to nurture yourself to distract yourself okay if you're having anxiety okay and you do something to make yourself feel better okay and that distracts you from the anxiety then I'm saying that's not patience if you do something to to make yourself feel better which isn't distracting yourself that is patience so for example let's say I don't know there you are over there okay here I am over here there's a way for me to for me to be with you that I feel better about that doesn't distract me from the anxiety I feel when I'm with you Whenever I'm with someone who I think isn't me, I feel a little anxiety.

[58:40]

So if you came, and if you came closer to me, sometimes when we get close to someone, we even more clearly feel the separation. Because as you get closer, you know what I mean? Get real close to somebody, if somebody's way, way far away, you don't notice that you feel separate from them because you can barely see them. But like if they're in the same bed with you, then you might be more aware of your separation. Or if they're about to get into your bed, you know, the sense of separation might be quite strong. You might feel very anxious about some people getting into your bed. So I'm saying there's a way to take care of yourself and make yourself feel as good as you can feel under the circumstances of feeling anxious, but don't distract from the anxiety. but don't distract you from the anxiety. Well, you still feel the anxiety, but you're present with it, and you feel better than if you do certain other things which would distract you from the anxiety.

[59:50]

Now, some of the things you might do to distract yourself, you might temporarily feel better about. So you can distract yourself and feel less pain, but really you're distracting yourself from it. It's still there. Whereas patience... doesn't distract from the pain it's still there but you feel better about it matter of fact patience is the way you feel most comfortable with the pain without distracting yourself and not only that but it takes much less energy to be close to the pain in this patient way than to distract yourself And sometimes, as you know, the things you do to distract yourself from pain cause damage. Right? For example, you might take drugs with an intention to nurture yourself, but actually it hurts you. The things you do in response to pain which distract you, generally speaking, are harmful.

[61:01]

Not always. Well, I'll give you an example of something that distracts you from the pain that I don't think is harmful. If you have an operation, like open heart surgery, these are, you know, this happens to people. They have open heart surgery. When you're recovering, oftentimes fluids accumulate in your chest. And it helps you heal if you can cough it up sometimes and breathe fairly deeply. Sometimes it helps move the fluids through you. Are you following this? But if you're in a lot of pain, you tend to constrict from the... breathing, and then that sort of hinders your breathing, hinders your progress. If you take little painkillers, sometimes it makes it possible to breathe more fully and helps the healing process.

[62:02]

Now, if you could practice patience with that pain, maybe you could breathe more deeply anyway, but let's say you can't. In that case, it might be somewhat beneficial to take the painkillers so you can breathe more easily. One time when I was a kid, I had a sore throat. It was so bad. I was in college, and I wasn't eating because it hurt so much to swallow. And I had a fever. So I went to the doctor, and he put me in the hospital, and they gave me some codeine and aspirin, and then I could swallow without it being so painful. And just eating, I got over the thing, whatever it was. So that seemed to be okay. But, you know... I wasn't taking the codeine and aspirin to distract myself from the pain. I was taking it so that I could eat. So I'm saying if the motivation is to distract yourself, I don't think it's necessarily nurturing. And patience is actually nurturing.

[63:05]

It's actually good for you to get close to the problems you have in this way that you have the capacity so you aren't wasting a lot of energy fighting things away or even doing harmful things to yourself to dissociate from them. Patience is definitely a nurturing practice. It's getting you close to something that you need to find the... that you need to find the truth of. Even a physical pain, patience is helpful. Because if you're patient with a physical pain, too, I think you tend to make the appropriate response. If you wiggle and fuss with a physical pain, sometimes you harm yourself. Physical pains, maybe you don't need to find the root source because it's pretty clear what it is if you have a broken leg or something. But our psychic pain, our anxiety, is not coming from the body, it's coming from our attachment and our misunderstanding.

[64:09]

And if we get close to that, we're nurturing ourselves towards a big healing, a healing of our understanding. Does that make sense? Yeah. I just think that the word patience is still mysterious to me, that context, that compassion. It is patience is a dimension of compassion. Yes. It's one of the bodhisattvas do many practices of compassion. Patience is one of them. Courage is another one. Courage is a compassion practice. To have the courage to open up to experience is part of what's involved in compassion. And patience and courage are very closely related. You have to have some courage to practice patience, but once you accomplish patience, you have much more courage. Courage is how you get to your pain in the first place to practice the patience.

[65:16]

And patience tends to open your heart up. But again, not just to the pain, but also to reality. Patience is really the primary cause, a condition of enlightenment. Patience is very important. It starts in this kind of like, down-to-earth way of developing the capacity to experience pain. The Sanskrit word for patience, pashanti, means capacity. Patience is not to withstand it. It's to embrace it and contain it. So maybe... maybe we need a little bit more on this next week i don't know so think about this this thing think about practicing compassion in the form of patience think about whether you're doing things to distract yourself from your pain or whether you're facing your pain making space for it and finding

[66:30]

The place in the center of the pain, the center of the pain in time and space. Once you find that place, I think you'll find, I found, that that place in the present of the pain is the most comfortable place to experience the pain. And if I'm in great pain and I find that place, and then I move a little bit into the future, or a little bit into the past, the pain flares up much stronger. In other words, if you're in pain and you're really feeling the presence of it and you think how long it's been going on, it flares up. If you think about how long it's going to go on, it flares up. And if you're not thinking about how long it has been going on or how long it will go on, you're getting closer to the center and that's the most comfortable place to feel it. And that's patience. And from there you start to then not open up into thinking of past and future, but open up into feeling what it's like to not be holding on, which is this willingness to drop your attachments, to try out living without holding on.

[67:49]

Could it be possible that it would be all right to let go? I'm in pain anyway. What have I got to lose? Maybe I can... And when you open up entirely, maybe the pain just goes away. Check it out. How many people would like a list of the Bodhisattva precepts? Some of you already have them, right? So about 25 people, it looks like. Okay, I'll bring those next time for you. All right? The 16 Bodhisattva precepts, yeah. Yeah. Are you in pain?

[69:01]

No pain? Any anxiety? Well, as the yoga teacher said, all you have to do is just stay where you are long enough and you realize you're uncomfortable but we have to stop pretty soon so throughout your day see if you can be where you are and if the pain starts to surface see if you can not run away and find a really good way to take care of yourself under the circumstances of being who you are This is the ground that renunciation grows in. This is the ground that letting go of attachment grows in.

[70:12]

Just simply feeling what's happening to you. Thank you. Good night.

[70:39]

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