again if I can just make a kind of broad sweeping picture I'm suggesting that the overall the overall context of Well, the meditation on ultimate reality, the overall context of it is love. And the fruit of meditation on ultimate reality just happens to be love also. Uh, someone said to me, he said I'm like a little dog.

[01:17]

If someone expresses love to me, my tail wags and I feel perky and ready to go. If people don't express love to me or maybe anger towards me, my tail goes down and I kind of curl up. And I said, I know some other people like that. He was surprised to hear that. And maybe I said everybody's like that. He was surprised to hear that. But I think actually most people are like that. Buddhas are a little different. So, and I think he also said something like, when I feel loved, I can die. So, I think that's right. If you feel loved, we can go through a great death.

[02:28]

And then, after going through the great death, great compassion is born. We call that, again, to the resurgence of love. So I'm kind of proposing that we develop, we work on developing an all-pervasive feeling of love and support, And based on that, we can go through the great death, which then will lead to the birth of great compassion. And that's kind of what Buddhism is about. It's kind of like the ultimate goal of Buddhism is this great death that has emptiness, I mean, that has compassion as its essence. Great death means you let go of all attachment, which means let go of all attachments to all ideas of substantial grasping onto inherent existence.

[03:52]

And in that emptiness, there is great love. But in order to go down into that, process of dying to this attachment, we need to feel a lot of support. We need to think about teachings which say that it's good to develop this feeling of love in ourselves and it's good to understand that it's coming to us all the time. So we need to generate love in our own mind and heart, and we need to listen to teachings that say that love is coming to us all the time, even if we don't generate this kind of feeling. It's coming to us all the time anyway. So part of being kind to ourselves actually is to listen to the teaching that we are being treated kindly.

[04:59]

And part of the practice is also to treat ourselves kindly and treat others kindly. A combination of meditating on how kindly we're being treated and how much support we're getting together with giving support to ourselves and others seals the world into one love fist. So maybe you've heard, you know, some ancient said that the entire world, all the mountains and rivers and everything are born at the same time that you're born. And all the Buddhas are practicing together with each person. Someone said to me, how do you know that?

[06:06]

I said, well, when I listen to that teaching, when I accept that teaching, I feel good. I feel good. I'm ready to die. I'm going to die pretty soon, but I'm not going to die without a lot of support. Now, I might die alone, but While I'm dying alone, all the Buddhas are going to tend to me. So I feel ready. And Dogen says, how do you understand this teaching of all the Buddhas are practicing together with each person? He said, well, think about what the practice of a Buddha is. What's the practice of a Buddha? The practice of a Buddha is to practice together with each person. I never heard of any other practice of a Buddha than to practice together with each person. So that's what they're practicing. Therefore they're practicing with each person.

[07:08]

And if you have trouble understanding this, just keep thinking about it until you kind of like are, you know, one with that teaching. but also work on other aspects of love, too. If you do that, then you can go to the great depth. Great depth also involves training in selflessness, training your awareness in selflessness. That's part of the great depth. And again, that work is sometimes a little irritating. the training in selflessness. Because part of what's involved there is to pay attention to how you're selfish. To pay attention to what you're clinging to is part of the training in selflessness. The culmination of the training in selflessness is the Great Death.

[08:09]

But as we approach, as we move through the practice of training in selflessness, There's the difficult work of facing up to whatever extent we are selfish, to whatever extent we're self-consumed. That's just the normal part of it. Why skip over that? But again, this is not necessarily tasty work. Well, it has a taste, but the taste tends to be bitter or sometimes putrid, sometimes bitter. nasty-tasting work to train ourselves in selflessness. But if we feel a lot of support, we can accept such a difficult training process. Some people try to do it without that support, I think they poop out. But then, if they get the support, then they can get up and try again.

[09:16]

And Then they can complete the process. Some people try to study selflessness by their own power. I think they poop out. We need help in order to do a thorough study of selfishness and be thoroughly trained in selflessness. The help is there. We just need to work at understanding it. So I'm a little bit, what do you call it, ambivalent.

[10:16]

I have two valences, two positive things I would like to talk about. One is the development of love and the other is the development of meditations which develop a selfless awareness. In one sense, I want to work on this love side so thoroughly that maybe I don't need to talk about the other one. On the other side, maybe some of you are ready for the other one, so I kind of want to mention it. So I maybe go back and forth between the two. So I might mention this kind of training in selflessness, just so it isn't so abstract, because that sounds kind of abstract to me, and then go back to more on love.

[11:38]

I'll do one or two examples of this. One example, which I've mentioned to you many times before, is the inspired utterance of the Buddha to one of his disciples, where he said, train yourself thus. In the heard, there will be just the heard. In the seen, there will be just the seen. And then I'll expand what he said a little bit. In the smelled, there will be just the smelled. In the tasted, there will be just the tasted. In the touched, there will be just the touched. And in the cognized, it will be just the cognized.

[13:02]

Or in the cognition, it will be just the cognition. Train yourself thus. Try to train yourself in that, like that. When, for you, in the heard, there's just a heard, and in the seen, there's just a seen, and in the tasted, there's just a tasted, and in the touched, there's just a touched, and in the cognized, there's just a cognized, then you will not identify with it. And he didn't say, but I'll put in parentheses. And you will not disidentify with it. Disidentification is negative identification. Close parentheses.

[14:04]

20th century update. When it's like this for you, that in the scene there's just a scene, then you won't identify with the scene. When in the herd there's just the herd, then you won't identify with the herd. And when you don't identify, there won't be like here, there, and in between. And this will mean the end of suffering. This is training in selflessness. there's a visual experience, and you train yourself so that the thing that's seen is all there is. Usually, of course, there's me seeing it, or even me and my ears hearing it.

[15:09]

But after a while, there's just the sound. Then there's no me in addition to the sound. So there's no way There's no mode of identification. There's just a sound. There's no self and other than. When there's no self and other, when that's dropped, there's no suffering. You can still have pain if you break your leg, which is a good thing, actually, so you don't try to walk on it. But you're not scared anymore of Other. You're not scared of the other anymore. You don't distrust that face anymore. You're not anxious. Okay, so that's Buddha's simple instruction on training in selflessness. In terms of monastic life, it's like the schedule is just the schedule.

[16:11]

The sound of the Han is just the sound of the Han. The sound of the bell is just the sound of the bell. The food, the butt, the knees, the tan, all the things that you experience are just them when you finish the training. Between now and then, there's some tendency of me and my schedule. Me and my Zahu, me and my bowls, me and my partner, and so on. By this training, it won't be you and the other monks anymore. They'll just be those monks. Now people may remind you, there's one person left out, and you say, oh yes, thank you. There's me too, I guess. But you don't walk around feeling like that. Like there's the world plus... the self. There's only the self, which is the universe.

[17:16]

That's called the self where the attachment is dropped off. Okay, so that's training in selflessness. Now, who wants to do this training in selflessness? Any volunteers? Great. Now, In order to do that, you're going to have to feel support. So let me know if you need more support. We'll try to crank it up for you. Because this is not necessarily fun, because, you know, what are you going to get out of it? Like, yeah, well, what am I going to get out of it? I can't even be there when it happens, right? So this is not going to be a big payoff for you, even though it's called the end of suffering. Because when you get there, you won't be the one who's not suffering anymore. So sorry, but it's okay. It's okay. Don't worry. It'll help everybody else. That's really you. So that's Buddha's instruction, and I think this instruction has been transmitted down to the present.

[18:27]

Here it is. You heard it. Somehow this got passed along in various ways, so you can hear it now. Pretty neat, huh? So you can practice it, but if you don't find this the most interesting thing to think about, then I think you need to work on love more. When you feel full enough of love and full enough support, you realize, oh, maybe I could do something to pay back all this good luck. I could practice this Buddhist teaching. That would be nice. You don't do the one I said. You can try some other one, but it better be the same thing. In other words, same thing means it better be selfless, right? Otherwise it's not really going to, like, lead to the great death and great compassion, which is the real payback for all the kindness you're getting is for you to realize great compassion. And it's like everything, your account's settled, you feel you've done what needs to be done.

[19:33]

Yes. I'm a little bit stuck on this question of love. As I hear you, you present the term, which is okay, but could you present the definition? In what terms are you using this word? Okay, Nigel wants to know more about love, but I was going to go back to that, okay? So I was like making this leap. down into the center of the kit for the training in selflessness to give you a little bit more feeling for what it is. And I'll go back and end with the love thing. So I just want to give one more example of this training in selflessness, which is training in the dharmakaya, training in ultimate reality, too. Training in selflessness is training in ultimate reality. Meditating on selflessness is meditating on ultimate reality.

[20:42]

Ultimate reality is selflessness, right? No self, emptiness, kind of the same thing. Buddha's teaching of no self, Buddha's teaching of emptiness. So the Zen school focuses on studies emptiness, tries to understand emptiness, help people understand emptiness, help people understand no self, help people understand selflessness. So, the founder of Zen in China, fortunately, he didn't write down much of his teachings, so you don't have to study him widely. He just left a few little tidbits, so you're kind of lucky that the founder of Zen didn't give you a lot of stuff to study, so you don't have to spend a lot of time choosing. And kind of one of the main teachings he gave was very much this kind of like training in selflessness, selfless awareness.

[21:43]

He said, you know, externally, don't activate your mind around objects. Internally, no coughing or sighing in the mind. With the mind like a wall, thus you enter the way. This is his term, his selflessness. So, it's the same teaching as the teaching of Buddha. When something's heard, okay, beep, something's heard, around that sound, you just let that sound be the sound. You don't activate the mind around it. You don't get whomped up about it.

[22:47]

You just have the sound. Now, if you should happen to get whomped up in the next moment, So there's a sound and then there's a womp-up. The womp-up is just whatever dimension that womp-up comes in. If it's a cognition, then it's just a cognition. But it's not a cognition about the sound. There's no kind of self that puts the cognition or the evaluation together with the sound. It's just sound, smell, cognition, cognition, sound, smell, taste, cognition. That's all. It's just boop, [...] boop. There's nobody there trying to tie the stuff together into a net to figure out gain and loss. So... Externally, when an object arises, the mind doesn't get stirred up. Internally, when an object arises, there's no kind of like, or, it's just simply what it is.

[24:00]

And then that's what it's like to have a mind like a wall. You're alive. Lots is happening. Moment by moment, something happens, something happens, something happens. But the attitude of the mind is like a wall. Namely, what day is it today? Thursday. That's it. Okay? Just one second. That's the mind like a wall. And that's the mind That's the body that enters the way. And if you like that, you go through the great death. And then you're ready to respond appropriately to all beings. Okay? Yes, Martin? So the sound arises. Yes. Yes.

[25:01]

No. Well, if you... There's a sound, okay? You say there's a sound. Now, let's say there's a sound. This gets a little complicated, but anyway... There is such a thing as sense perception, where we actually are aware and we're responding at a sensory level, which is where we have not named whatever the sensory experience is, and that level of experience is going on with us, but we don't know about it consciously, because there's no mind to make it external. Then, at the level even of where we still name things, we sometimes name things as sound before we say blue jay, At that level, now you're aware of it, but you haven't yet called it blue jay.

[26:03]

Now, if you're aware of it at that level, this could happen. And then the next moment you say blue jay, you need to be able to see sound and then blue jay. Not sound and put blue jay with it. Because not all sounds are followed by blue jay, right? In fact, some sounds are followed by blue jay, and then later you say not blue jay, right? There can be a series like that. But to let each one just be what it is, this is not our usual way. We tend to compound, concatenate, interweave, and make stories because we think we need to in order to, like, you know, pay the rent. To drop that, turns out, is actually possible. Not that dangerous. You shouldn't try to learn how to do this, by the way, when driving heavy equipment. Don't try to do this first time when you're operating a chainsaw. But in a fairly safe environment like walking or sitting, you can try this and you won't go crazy.

[27:09]

You won't die. All your bodily fluids won't start draining out of you. You'll be okay. But sometimes you might think, what would happen to me if I stopped holding on to this in this authorized sequence of associations, you know? Like, am I going to connect this... Like, you hear a sound and then you hear another sound, you don't necessarily connect them, except according to certain dispositions. But when there are those dispositions, you do connect them. And you think, how could I let go of, like, that sound, which is usually connected with danger? Would I be able to function? Well, yes. But we're scared to not have certain associations with certain things. That's the self still holding there to hold all this stuff together. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. It's when you put them together.

[28:12]

And they don't have to be together. But probably the reason why you put them together... is because of the sense of self. And to keep that self thing going. Because that's part of what a self is, is like how you put certain things together. Like, you know, if somebody says Martin and then somebody says something else, you put that together a different way than I do. And we have our, you know... But if we're both practicing, we put it together in the same way, and then we don't put it together. If we're both practicing, saying Martin is a good guy, we both treat it the same way. But if we're not practicing, then when we say Martin, one of us is waiting for good guy. And when it happens, it's zapped on there permanently. And the other one says Martin is a good guy, and you say, well, we don't need the good guy part, it can be there or not. You could just say Martin.

[29:13]

You don't have to say good guy. You don't have to say bad guy. That's okay. So I'm detached about your fame and game. And you maybe have some concerns. But when it comes to mine, then I'm attached. But when the sequence of events of praise and blame associated with my name are treated the same by you and me, then we're both practicing. But there can be these sequences. But it's not that... Martin is a great guy means that you or somebody else in the room is deluded and attached. It doesn't necessarily mean that. This can happen. You can still have praise of Martin happening in the world of enlightenment. It's just that the enlightened beings are not laminating Martin and good guy together or Martin and bad guy together. They're not doing that. But such events can happen in this world. praise can arise, and does, but it's not there to stick things together and make people scared or proud.

[30:16]

It's there as an opportunity to practice love. And the first step of love, of real love, the fundamental thing is to leave things alone. That's really it. And there's other aspects of it we will talk about, our blossoms around that, Okay, so that's, these are two examples of training in, training in meditation on emptiness. And actually I know this guy, you know, he's just for like a walking around, what do you call it, what do you call it, ambulatory, what? Any difference if I say or what say instead of marking men? Say it again. Oh, you say marking their men. Is there a difference? In the practice. Yeah. If I say instead of marking a man, is there differences?

[31:26]

Not in terms of the practice, no. You say men are good or men are bad. You hear men, okay? Just that's it. You think men, that's it. That's all it is. You don't feel obliged to get excited around that word. You don't have some agenda around that word. The next thing that happens is not your predisposed response to it. Or even if it was by coincidence what used to be your predisposed response, it is now cut off. There's no, like, road between this thing and this thing. You know, you've heard the expression, cut off the mind road? That's what it means. Cut off the disposition between the events of your life. The road between everything, the self-constructed road that's like, you know, the highway system of the country is like, in your mind, the same thing. You cut that. So, between men, you have the idea or the sound men,

[32:29]

That's it. You don't have to really cut it. You just leave it alone. Now, if the bridge starts to go over to the other thing, then you cut it. And this bridge will be your disposition, a sentiment, an established pattern of association. There is no connection between things except the connection between everything. But the subset of connections between special connections with things are set up by our dispositions. Those are cut. Those special, unique connections, the limited amount of connection, like, I'm good friends with those people, not these people, rather than I'm good friends with everybody. When you're good friends with everybody, you don't have to make connections with certain people. So, like I said a minute ago, I know this guy. He's like, I would say he's an ambulatory, well, like you people, he's ambulatory. He's an ambulatory doctor.

[33:34]

He's like, you know, out of the hospital, walking around. And he practices Zen. But he has a tendency to be a little, he has, one of his dispositions is like, you know, Martin, jerk. Justin Jerk. He finds everything a little bit irritating. Not everything, but he finds a lot of things irritating, this guy. So when he's meditating, his meditation is usually like sound, yuck, you know, smell, yuck, or concentration, not good. He gets angry at almost everything that happens when he's meditating. Somehow, one time, you know, shortly before I talked to him, he was meditating and some stuff arose. And there was still a little bit of a flap, you know, but it was kind of like he kind of laughed it off. And like something arose and he went, yeah, but he kind of went, yeah.

[34:39]

Just a little switch from, you know, like, yeah, well, so what? You know, a big so what, like, sound, well, so what? You know, Martin, so what? Elka, yeah, okay. Jennifer, so what? You know, no big deal. I mean, but the same for everything, kind of like, you know, so what, so what, so what? And he said, suddenly everything shifted dramatically. He said, everything went... And he said, suddenly the grass wasn't grass anymore. And he said, it was so neat. And he said, all the Buddhas weren't over there anymore. This is one of those things where you say, don't talk about this anymore. Don't talk to anybody about this. This is called, you understand that form is not form.

[35:50]

Form is emptiness, right? It doesn't mean form is emptiness, it means form is not form. It means grass is not grass, I'm not me, you're not you, pain is not pain, pleasure is not pleasure, But still, pleasure is pleasure, right? If it wasn't there, you wouldn't be able to talk about it and say, well, pleasure is not pleasure anymore. You're up in the zendo, you're in pain, and it's not pain anymore. It didn't exactly switch to pleasure, it just said you're free, pain is free of pain. Also, it's just as good if pleasure is free of pleasure, although you might not think so, it is. We're burdened by pleasure being pleasure, not just pleasure, that in pleasure there's just pleasure, That pleasure is pleasure. And we keep it that way, and pain is pain, and we keep it that way. His reactions, he stopped doing that, and he understood something about the heart's a joke, right? Grass is not grass.

[36:53]

In emptiness, there is no grass, there is no self, there is no colors, there is no nodes, there is no tongue. Of course there is. Regular nose is there. It's just not your nose anymore. It's a no-nose. And this is a big relief. And then those Buddhas are not over there anymore. There's no here, there, and in between. And this is the end of suffering. So, that little example, his mind became like a wall. Just for a little bit there. And a real break in your usual you know, animal maneuvering can actually make a major break in the existence of the world, which you're holding up because, you know, that's your style. The disposition to keep the world all connected up in certain ways, like I'm connected to man, connected to priest, connected to Buddhism, blah, blah, blah, all those connections

[37:59]

don't have to be there, and they can drop away, and then there's relief. So that's the source, that's the great death. And the training is this kind of training, but we can talk about more. And now I'll go back to, if you're ready, low. Ready? Yes? Sometimes when I'm out, especially with strangers, in restaurants or in this town, it seems sometimes the odd time that everybody seems to be enlightened, playing their role, whether it's good or bad, just patiently waiting and helping me. Is this something like what you're meaning about all the food? Yeah. All right. And actually, that's something I wanted to mention too, which I keep forgetting to mention, and that is, let's get this over with now, early in the practice period, oftentimes during the shuso ceremony, at the end of the practice period, somebody asks the shuso, well, what are we doing this for?

[39:15]

Why do we have this monastery? Why do we have practice periods? Why don't you ask that at the beginning? And the shiso says something sometimes really good, but basically the practice period is over and that person is asking you, why don't you wonder at the beginning what we're doing and why we're going to have a shiso ceremony. In other words, why are we doing that? What's it got to do with all those zillions of people suffering all over the world? Why are we up here in these mountains? What's this got to do with our life when we leave? Because we're all leaving here. one way or another. I said, well, no, I'm going to stay here. I'm going to be cremated here and be buried here. I'm never leaving. Well, okay. So anyway, people asked that, and I was, you know, my wife told me she went to one of these nice grocery stores, and she was in a checkout line there, you know,

[40:18]

where you pay, and there was a young man, and, I don't know, a young kid, like, maybe in his 20s, and an older woman, maybe in her 40s, and he was, like, learning the job, and she was helping him. And she was thinking, you know, here's this kid, who, you know, we don't know, maybe he's, we don't know if he's going to spend his whole life at that checkout counter now. or most of the... I think he's been like 30 years there, 40 years. Is this like his destiny to do that? So she's wondering about that for this young man. He was trying, you know, to learn the job, to do it well. And this woman was there helping him. So... And I thought, was that her destiny also? That she's going to be there helping younger people for the next whatever number of years. So there they are both at the checkout counter. And I thought, well, now this is a good position for a bodhisattva.

[41:20]

To be, you know, either one of them. But particularly maybe after you've been there for a while, you're the older person who's teaching the young person how to be a checkout person. Plus, you're also relating to all these customers And so, actually someone talked to me today about that's what they want to do after they leave Tassajara. They want to go and work at a grocery store. It's a very good place for Bodhisattva. You can help the other people learn how to do their job. And you can help all these thousands of customers. You can give them love. You can show them that they're getting the kind of support that they need to understand so that they can practice the Bodhisattva way. So, what we're doing at Taos of Harm here is we're training people so that they can leave here, or stay, but anyway, let's just say we're all going to leave and go work on driving buses, changing diapers and bedpans, cleaning up vomit, giving people the beginning part of that process.

[42:36]

at the store you know they get to eat the stuff before they can put it out so we're both ends of this process giving people love that's what the bodhisattvas are all about and that's what we're training ourselves for someone say why don't we just go do that now fine except that some people forget when they get to the store after about 10 minutes, they forget that they went there in order to give love eight hours a day to all the customers and to teach the young workers how to give love. They forget that after a few minutes when somebody says something like, Martin, you're a... whatever, you know. And you sort of forget what the reason for your going to work there was. So we need to train ourselves in selflessness so that we can remember, not even, don't have to remember, so that the love doesn't get derailed by your name and then the following word, like, Andy, you are fired, Andy fired.

[43:45]

Or Andy promoted, you know. You go there to help and then you get anti-promoted and you forget that you went there to be helping and then you think, oh, I'm here to be, you know, head of Safeway. Obviously, that's what they want me to do. I mean, I didn't come here for that, but this is what's happening. I mean, I'm ascending here. What can I say, you know? Well, you're ascending, but you still have the same job as a bodhisattva, namely to teach people enough love so that they will drop out of their selfish attachments. It's not just to give them love and make them feel good. It's to give them so much love that they kind of get the picture, not just to get love, but so they understand that they're getting it and start wondering where it's all coming from and what's the point of it all, and so on. So we need to be trained. And in the Blue Cliff Record, I think around, in Cleary's translation, around page 101 or something like that,

[44:51]

somebody says, you know, we people, in other words, these people up in the mountain monasteries, we let go of the ultimate. We let go of the ultimate. In other words, we have dropped into emptiness, but we let go of emptiness and we join hands with all beings and walk through birth and death with them. So we need to practice love and feel love so we can experience grasp emptiness, understand emptiness, go through the great death, and then join hands with all beings. And then, you know, the commentator asks, well, how can they do that? How can all these people who like let go of the ultimate and hold hands with all beings and go through birth and death, how can they do that? And he says, because they've ended all outflows. You can't hold hands with all beings and walk through birth and death for very long if you haven't ended outflows.

[45:55]

If you're still attached to self, then when you hold hands with beings and you go through one life with them, and you go through a death, you say, that was good. Did you see me do that? And then you do another one. Then you get in the sink. You start getting inflated about how successful you are as a bodhisattva and you get tired and you have to go to the rest area. And the rest area, you're not only resting from the drainage of your outflow, but you've also forgotten what you're there for and that's why you're weakened. You may never come back in the draining area from the recovery area for quite a while. So that's what we're doing here. We're training to be these kind of bodhisattvas, these beneficent beings. We may leave here and start another monastery, but basically we're training beings in not only love, but how to end attachment, which is the source of these outflows. So we can effectively, you know, work at it, not just once in a while, but kind of like throughout the day.

[47:01]

And then repeatedly, day after day. That's what Kausahara is for. That's what the practice period is for. The schedule is for. That's what your social memories are for. And if you don't understand that, we'll talk about it. And maybe by the end of the practice period you can get that clear so that we're not going to have that same old question again at the end of the practice period except sort of as kind of a celebratory recital. Okay? So, yes? What do you mean by outflow? Outflow is like... I'll just say briefly that outflow is like based on some dualistic understanding like I think I'm here and you're over there then I give you a dollar and maybe I think I lost a dollar and thought you gained a dollar. Or you take the dollar from me and I thought I lost a dollar and you gained a dollar. Or I did something for you and I think I gave something which went over there. So then I feel like I lost something and then you say thank you and I feel like I gained something.

[48:06]

It's like the dualistic thinking between here and there creates this gain-loss thing. So you're always gaining and losing all day long. And some people like losing all day long, right? Depends on how it works, but the self other thing can be lots of losses, lots of gains, or going back and forth between two and all kinds of patterns, but it's tiring. You see the world in terms of gain and loss, it's tiring. To say the least, it also can be very upsetting. So if I see the world in terms of self and other, if I have some value, and then you're doing something to tamper with my values, and I'm actually holding to my position and my values, then you messing with my values can throw me into a... Well, if you read that section, it says, if you have fixed views, if you hold to your views, your dualistic views, you can get thrown into a poisonous sea.

[49:08]

Things can get very turbulent and very toxic if I see myself separate from you and my values are being tampered by your behaviors. Now, if I don't attach to my values, like, you know, my value is sound, good, bad, blue jay, and I just hear these values come up, which maybe have some pattern, but I don't attach to them, then there's no outflows. Like this guy, you know, he's meditating, and he kind of goes, you know, it's just like the value comes up, but you don't attach to it, so it doesn't push you around. Does that make sense? you still have the value like you may, you still may think, you know, that's not good, you know, that's not good, that value may be fairly stable, but you don't attach to it. So the value is a resource rather than an affliction. Okay?

[50:11]

Okay? Yes. Yeah, so love, and so Nigel, he said, I don't know if he really wants it, but he wanted a definition, and I can't exactly give a definition about what love is, but I can talk about some practices or meditations. Yeah. I'm interested in how you are Well, I don't know if I want to say it's a technical term. Anyway, it's a word, the word love, and I don't know what it is, first of all. I just want to say I don't know what it is. But maybe Dale does. I was wondering if you could do it with compassion. I'm using the word love to embrace a wide range of other things, which I don't know what they are either, but I'm using love for what we call loving-kindness.

[51:30]

So, I forgot my hat, but anyway, somebody gave me a hat. You know, the Chinese character on the front, which means, which is usually translated as love, and it's pronounced ai, but it means like love, like affection or lust. On the back of the head it says love. But I don't so much mean that kind of love. I mean maitri or metta, which is often translated as loving kindness. I mean karuna, which is often translated as compassion. And the Chinese characters, you know, let's see, one of them is like, let's see, one of them is like this. This is pronounced he. And there's another one that's like this. This is pronounced gee. If you look up these two characters in the dictionary, it says he, die he, die in great he.

[52:36]

This means love and also means pity. People in America don't like fool. Don't pity me. Anyway, this character means pity, sorrow, grief, and love. This is the Chinese character often used to translate Karuna. And Karuna, I think I heard the Dalai Lama say that Karuna means dented happiness. The etymology of Karuna. Ladies and gentlemen, I really think that only happy people feel Karuna. Compassion is something that happy people feel. But it is a painful feeling. If you're a happy person and you feel pain. And I would also say that really happy people feel karuna. That if you don't feel karuna, your happiness is very shallow.

[53:41]

So this is one of the characters, one of the meanings of love I feel is compassion and you're happy. Love Another word for what love includes is happiness. When you feel love, you're happy. Happy people are loving people. And one of the things you feel when you're happy and loving is you feel compassion. In other words, other people's suffering hurts. You don't feel their suffering, you just feel pain when you see them suffer. So you see somebody bleeding, unless they tell you it's really fun or something, you feel pain. You see somebody sprain their ankle, it hurts you. And if you find out more bad stuff about that, it hurts you more. But you're happy to be hurt that they're in pain. You're not happy that they're in pain, you're happy that their pain hurts you, because that's what happiness is, to be connected to people like that.

[54:43]

That's karuna. Maitri, and because it dents your happiness, you naturally want them to not Suffering. This kind of love is that you actually don't... You're patient, but you actually can't just indefinitely put up with their suffering. In other words, you need them. This kind of love includes that you need people to become free of suffering. You need it. You have to have it. Gotta have it. But you're happy that you've got to have it. It isn't like, you know, you're desperate, you know, craving, you know. You're happily, you're happy that you've got to have other people's happiness. You're happy that you need other people to be happy. Okay, that's karuna. And you're going to, and your great compassion is not only that you're that way, but you're going to work for that. And there's no problem, nothing's going to stop you.

[55:44]

You cannot be stopped in this work. And you can be that way, without outflows, when you understand selflessness, when you understand emptiness. For you, the answer is no. Your motivation is that you can't stand for them, you can't tolerate, you can't put up with them continuing to suffer. You have to work for their freedom from suffering. That's karuna, and that's this he. A ji is also, if you look, first meaning is love, a ji is not, doesn't have sorrow and grief under it. It's love and friendliness. So it's like Maitri doesn't have that painful thing in it, although you do wish for people to be free of pain. It's more of a positive wish. It's wanting the best rather than concentrating on the intolerability of other people's suffering.

[56:54]

It is in your own. It is wishing people well, even if they're fine. It's like somebody's fine, you wish them well. You want everybody to have the very best. So you, you know, you send Hallmark cards. This is for older people, that one. You wish yourself the very best. That's maitri or metta. And you wish yourself the very best. And you may not get the very best, but you wish it. You wish it anyway. She may be waiting, just anticipating things she may never, never possess. But while she's waiting, try a little kindness. So, she may never get it, but you still wish her the best.

[57:58]

And if time goes on and she never gets it, you don't say, well, hey, I've been wishing that she would have this the best for a long time, and you haven't got it, so I'm going to quit. You know, you've been sick all this time, I've been wishing you'd be well, and you're still sick. If you don't get better in the next two weeks, I'm going to stop. It's not that kind of wishing. It's wishing as a meditation on love, not to get things for people. That's not how it works. That's worldly manipulation. If you understand this love, the love will take care of things, not your wishing things. So you develop this love which won't be stopped even if all the things you hope for don't get realized. You keep generating this love. And sometimes the way the story goes is that the very good things you're wishing for, for yourself and others, do not happen in order that you can strengthen your love. Because this love, ultimately what it's about is to set you up for enlightenment.

[59:03]

and so that you can get beyond this thing about gain and loss. So that's another aspect of it. Another aspect of this, as I already mentioned, is joy. That you actually joyfully interact with yourself and other beings. You appreciate beings. Even though you're suffering or other beings are suffering, you basically appreciate them. You're happy about them. It's a joy for you to see the being. And the last one, the last aspect of these four, these are called the four immeasurable minds, the last aspect is called equanimity. Joy by the... So, metta... or maitri, karuna, mudita, and the last one is upeksha, equanimity. And equanimity means basically you're able to see the sameness of all things.

[60:05]

So aspect of love is to see everything as the same. You see, so you don't prefer enlightenment over delusion. You see basically they're the same. They're inseparable. You don't prefer men over women, dogs over cats, healthy people over sick people, sick people over healthy people, poor people over rich people, rich people over poor people. You don't have preferences. And the fundamental thing about love is where this is all pointing to, is just letting things be the way they are, is the ultimate core of love. And these things are like warm-ups for that. And I have the history in my practice in this lifetime of hearing about these poor immeasurable minds of of loving kindness or love, of compassion, of joy and of equanimity.

[61:11]

I heard about these practices under concentration practices. And in the Visuddhi Magga, if you want to read about them, they're listed in the concentration section of the Path of Purification. And they are concentration practices. You can actually get into a trance by doing these four measurable minds. by focusing on them in meditation, you can actually go into a trance, according to some people. So, they're listed as a concentration practice, and some other people list it as an antidote to anger. And it's true, they are antidotes to anger, and they do protect you from anger. It's true. What are they? What are they? What do you mean, what are they? What do you mean, what are they? Well, apparently not. They are love, loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Those are the four inequitable minds. But how do you, like I thought you were talking about a concentration exercise.

[62:16]

Well, how do you practice it? Like this. You go like this. You go, may I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be buoyant in body and mind. May I be free of closure. May I be safe. May I be free of anxiety, fear, anger, and affliction. I say that to myself, and I say it like I mean it. like with no reservations, I say it like, well, I'm saying this, but I don't really believe it, or I'm saying this, but I don't really deserve it, or I'm saying this, but I hope nobody finds out, or I'm saying this, but if I don't get some results pretty soon, I'm going to stop. I'll do it like for five minutes. If things get better, I'll keep it up, but if I don't, no. Even if you're saying that kind of stuff to yourself, even if you're saying, well, what am I getting out of this?

[63:16]

While you're saying it to yourself, you feel, may this guy be happy. May this guy be buoyant in body and mind, relieved of this gaining idea. So you say that to yourself like you really want yourself to be happy. And you mean it. And you mean it so much that you actually kind of like, you listen to yourself say, I think he means that. I think he actually wants me to be happy. I think that's it. I mean, that's it. And he's not saying, you know, I want you to be happy now, and if you aren't, I'm going to stop. He's saying, flat out, I want you unconditionally to be happy. And you do that until you really feel that's what you feel. And you feel happy about feeling that way. And feeling happy about feeling that way goes over into the third one, which is joy. You do it so much that you start feeling enraptured with joy and enthusiasm about how happy you are that you want yourself to be happy. You get concentrated in it.

[64:18]

You're absorbed in these loving wishes for yourself. Does that feel the same? Well, yeah, but I mean, there's one you use. It sounds sort of Like, how would you act in the world? I mean, like, if you were doing that as an exercise, just so you would find your everyday life more... Did you say, how would you act in the world? Yeah, like, it sounds like you might be, you know, playing around and acting kind of dippy. You know? Well, you know, you might... It's possible that you might act dippy or blistered. That's why it's often good to do this. In a monster. In a monster. where the other people are also doing and they walk by you and they look at you and you're thinking I'm kind of dippy and they're looking at you saying are you thinking that you're dippy? and you're saying I hope you're happy I hope that in the middle of your dippiness you're buoyant in body and mind

[65:27]

I hope that in your practice of loving-kindness, you're free of affliction. They hope that for you, because they're at that stage of really hoping for themselves, so they also can hope for you. So you do that, and when you're really fully doing it yourself, then you do it with somebody you like. So, you know, among tasar, maybe some of the people here you like a little bit, so you do it towards them. And then you do it with people, maybe some people here or outside of here that you feel fairly neutral about. You don't have some strong affection for one way or another. You just think they're okay, and you do it towards them. And then you do it towards those people here that you really like. And then you do it towards anybody here or anyplace else that's hurt you or harmed you or disappointed you or betrayed you. You do it towards them. And this is the way you do that first one. And you do it until you're actually absorbed in it, until it takes over your life. That could be like a concentration practice.

[66:31]

But you can also do it not so much as a concentration practice to get into a trance, but just as an ongoing feeling of love for yourself and all beings. or simply love and wishing the best for all life. That's the first one. But as I said, the first one naturally spills over into the third one because if you're doing it properly, it is a joy. And if you wish well for people, you start to really appreciate them. Okay? The other two are a little different, though. The equanimity is a little different. So you have to work on that, work on trying to, like, see... What preferences do you have among people and among states and yourself? And work on those. And you can see that working on equanimity is very closely related to training in selflessness because values and preferences are often hooked into selflessness. But to try to train yourself in that is a very good Buddhist practice called training in equanimity. Now, again, as I said, the basic practice in some ways is just like to sit.

[67:39]

So actually, the practice in selflessness is very closely related to love too, fundamental love, which is like to give yourself to everything and let everything be itself. So generosity, fundamentally, is to let things be what they are. give things back to themselves, is an act of love, it's an act of generosity, and it's an act of non-attachment. So, again, as I said, in my history, I thought these practices were on the level of concentration practice or antidotes to anger, which is important, and I practiced them in that way, but I was told that that's all they are. But I think actually these practices are inseparable from Buddhahood. That Buddhahood is these four practices. Same thing. It's just that actually there's one story about that.

[68:44]

Some of the Buddha's disciples met the disciples of another teacher in India and they talked together and they found out that their teacher and Buddha were both teaching these four immeasurable minds. And the teachers of the other... the students of the other teachers said, well, it looks like your teacher and our teacher are teaching the same thing. And they said, well, it does, doesn't it? So they went back to the Buddha and they said, are you teaching the same thing as this other person? He said, well, basically, I am, but that if you connect these four with the Eightfold Path, Seven Wings of Enlightenment, Four Noble Truths, then it's the same. But really... Eightfold Path, Four Noble Truths and these four are the same. But if you didn't have the Eightfold Path, Four Noble Truths and so on connected to them, then it wouldn't be the full understanding of what these four are. So now my understanding is that these practices are not just preparations

[69:48]

for real meditation. They are real meditation, it's just that they don't necessarily speak of the full implications of what they are, which is training in selflessness. But again, since the kitchen's leaving, I'm going to stop pretty soon. Again, I think the basic feeling is that If we really feel loved, be loved, and if we love, we dare to let go of our attachments. If we don't really feel love for all beings, and we don't really feel loved, we just continue to be attached to our usual way. Because we don't feel safe to let go. We think we still have to stay in the driver's seat a little bit to make sure things go fairly well. But as you start to practice a little bit, you start to loosen up a little bit. As you start to get calm, you start to loosen up the self-other grip.

[70:50]

As you start to practice love towards yourself and others, the grip starts to loosen. And as the love develops more and more, and you feel it coming towards yourself more and more, you get more and more ready to let go or to let body and mind drop off and enter into this life. Life is a wall. where the Heart Sutra is going on all the channels all day long. And you're, you know, you're happy and you just don't tell anybody about it. Okay? Is that enough for today? Since the kitchen has left? So you're satisfied? Yeah. There we are in Eternity.

[71:46]

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