...yield into some little tight spot, you know, and the bodhisattva has regressed. The bodhisattva slips back into grip, you know, slips back into expectations again. Like, you know, I think I've mentioned this to you before. I had this, I haven't mentioned to you before, but I just want to tell you, I went to Carmel and did a workshop, and some of the people there have gone through the precept ceremony, and I asked him, I said, after we invoke the presence of the Buddhas and ancestors at the beginning of the ceremony, what's the first thing we do? And then they said various things, you know, confession, offering of sins, what was the other thing they said? Chant the Heart Sutra. And I said, no, we don't chant the Heart Sutra in our ordination ceremony. And they tried various things.

[01:02]

Confession, repentance. And they said confession. And I said, no, no. They said repentance. And yeah, we do that, but it's later, something before that. And they tried all this stuff. And finally, one of the people said, oh, I give up. And I said, that's it. And actually, in the so-called lay initiation, in the regular Soto Zen manual, and now in this little book that we have, it has renunciation as part of the lay ordination too. We don't shave all the hair off, but we cut a little of the hair off. So renunciation is not just for priests, it's for all bodhisattvas. Right? That's what I'm saying to you. So anyway, but it was interesting. They tried all this stuff and finally one of them just said, I give up. He said, that's it. So renunciation happens in the beginning of our ordination ceremony. And perhaps you've seen some of these ceremonies both for the so-called priests and the lay people. And there is sometimes an experience you can have, a subjective experience you can have of there being a renunciation occurring.

[02:07]

And even if you don't have a subjective sense of it, even if you don't see and look at those people and see, hey, something dropped away there. It doesn't mean that you can't have a subjective experience, but the actual renunciation, the deepest level, is not a subjective experience. It's a relationship. But even after this renunciation happens, both subjectively and in reality, sometimes what you see happening to these bodhisattvas later in their practice is they regress. And they start seeking some kind of experience which will confirm their bodhisattvahood. Even though they entered, they did the ordination ceremony and they let go of all expectation, right? I renounce attachments. I renounce seeking something to confirm me. Of course I want confirmation, but I renounce seeking it. And in that ceremony there's a purification because of this renunciation, but then there's a slipping back. So that happens sometimes. slipping back into some subjective experience that's going to happen in me so that I'll be aware that I'm actually on the bodhisattva path.

[03:16]

How am I doing? Am I on the bodhisattva path? The student says to the teacher. And they might be doing that just to trick the teacher, just to see if the teacher will... offer them a challenge. And teachers might say, yes, you are. And then, the question is, is that bodhisattva seeking something so that they will be able to feel that they're on the path of not seeking anything? Like a yes. And then they have experience of a yes. And then they feel like, oh yeah, and there I got that, so now I am on the path. Well, this is not the path. This is, this is the path, excuse me, I take it back, this is the path, but it is the path before the first level of renunciation. where you're still thinking, okay, I'm going to get something like confirmation that I'm on the path. Okay? Like Mara still came to visit Buddha even after Buddha, yes, Mara came visiting, and Buddha, and Mara works for Buddha.

[04:23]

Christina? Christina? It's answered, okay. It's the Rosie, I don't know. Martha, yeah. Boy, it's hot up here. It's hot down here. Well, in a sense, there's a transformation. Yeah, there's a transformation from the self, which is those habits of grabbing it is and it isn't. So, again, to meet whatever comes with no mind means to meet with a mind that

[05:27]

to meet without the mind that the self depends on. What kind of mind does the self depend on? It depends on a mind of picking and choosing, of trying to control what's happening, of judging that it is or it isn't right or wrong, or that it is or isn't Buddhism. That mind we renounce. That's the mind of the self. That is the self. The self is really that pattern of ways of relating, which disturb our actual relationship. When we renounce that, we settle into the readiness to leap, and we leap into who we actually are, which is our relationship. our true relationship. So there is a kind of transformation of the self in that way. There's still a person, but the person's not wounded anymore by all this grasping and seeking. It's like an uncovering.

[06:30]

There could be an uncovering, but I think the uncovering If there's an uncovering, fine, there's an uncovering, but it's not some subjective experience of uncovering. But there might be an uncovering. But really, it's more like there's a realization of that which is... Actually, there's a realization of what is covered. Ah... Rosie? Actually, being caught in the third one is a kind of regression, but that wasn't what I was speaking of.

[08:02]

That's more than a regression. That's more like an illness, I would say. It's a kind of getting stuck. And the regression would be that when you come back to the first one, that you get stuck there a little bit. But in some sense, to realize Buddhahood and not move forward is a kind of regression. So, yes. To move forward is not necessarily... Usually, yeah. The real moving, yes. Right. Right. That's the way it is. No. No. So actually, going forward really usually is going backwards. And what I was going to say was, when Martha was talking about, was there a transformation?

[09:08]

You know, when Huay Rang came to the sixth ancestor, Huay Nung, and Huay Nung said, you know, well, what is it that thus comes? You know, what is Buddha? what is this Buddha here? And Huay Rang said, to say it's this misses the point. And then the sixth ancestor says, well, is then there no practice or transformation? And he said, I don't say there is, I don't say there isn't practice and realization. or practice in transformation. So you ask me, is there transformation? I would say, well, I won't say there isn't. The most important thing is that it must not be defiled by me saying yes and having them both of us grasp it or either one of us grasping it. Now, I guess it's okay for me to say yes if I don't grasp it and then you grasp it.

[10:12]

Because then, you know, at least one of us didn't, I really didn't defile it. You just, you defiled it by grasping what I, when I said, yes, there is, you know. Right. But, but as long as one of us didn't defile, then I can just say, no, that's not what I meant. I was just kidding. I didn't really mean that there was. It's just that I'm saying, to say that it's this, it misses the point, and to say that there is misses the point, and to say there isn't misses the point. So I don't say there isn't, and I don't say there is. In other words, I don't get into it is and it isn't. In other words, at this time, I'm not being a sentient being. I'm not going to do the sentient being thing right now. I'm not getting into that. I'm not going anyplace away from being a sentient being. I'm just not going to answer that question that way. And the Sixth Sense just says, this non-defilement is what has been protected and maintained by all the Buddhas. This is the way I am. This is the way you are.

[11:15]

Have no doubt. And I probably won't forget this, but one of the things I'm working up to is to discuss this. discusses Chinese character Ren, or Run. This character is the highest virtue in Confucianism. And this character also, I think, characterizes the bodhisattva life.

[12:17]

So in the next class I'll go into that, but before that next class happens, I'll go into it also. And to point out to you that this character is built of two parts. The part on the left is a radical, it's a radical transformation of the character, which means person. And the character and the radical on the right is the character. Those two horizontal lines are also a radical that makes up the character, but it's also a character in itself, which means two. So the character together means a person and two. And what character means, it means many things, but one of the things it means is selflessness. It means the relationship between two people, but it also means a person who has entered into that relation, who has become that relational person, who's no longer a person who relates, but has become the person of the relationship.

[13:38]

In other words, a selfless person. This character is also translated as benevolence, but it means selfless benevolence. In other words, compassion, benevolence, united with selflessness. This character is the one that Matsu, Master Ma, uses as the primary characteristic of a Buddha. A Buddha is a person who is capable of this kind of relationship, of becoming the relationship. of realizing the actual relationship. And there's enough on that for now. And I'll go into more about the fun of what the Chinese do with this word later. But I just wanted to point out that the point is the relationship.

[14:43]

And relationships I would say Metaphysical Because their relationships are not Subjectively are not Russians that relationships are not the subjective experience of the relationship We do have subjective relationships subjective experiences of our relationships and sometimes we have painful subjective experiences of our relationships. And based on those painful subjective experiences of our relationships, we sometimes do things which we have a subjective experience of being very bad. Following that? And sometimes we have a subjective experience of a relationship as being very, very pleasant. And based on that subjective experience of the relationship as being very pleasant, sometimes we have a subjective experience of doing something that's really bad.

[15:48]

Does that make sense? No? Any questions? Don't be afraid. That didn't make sense to you, Sala? Well, like, you know, you could have a subjective experience of your relationship with your daughter as being very, very nice. That could be your subjective experience of your relationship with your daughter. Based on that subjective experience, you could do something cruel. Like, for example, well, you can imagine, right? So we do have subjective experiences of our relationship, but acting from our subjective experience of our relationships is, generally speaking, harmful. Maybe once in a while it isn't, but even when it isn't immediately harmful, it sets up a harmful self-centered practice because it is self-centered. You're actually hurting yourself You're damaging your true person every time you act based on a subjective experience of a relationship because you're basically saying this subjective experience is the relationship.

[16:52]

You're harming yourself and others. but you're not harming the relationship, fortunately. It doesn't get touched by this grasping at your own experiences. But also the objective experience of the relationship is also not the relationship. So what the other person thinks or what everybody in the universe and all the scientists think the relationship is, if you grasp that, that also is the basis of harming the person, the actual person. The actual relationship is free of subjective and objective. And that's where we leap. When we stop grasping our subjective and objective renditions of our relationships. But we know it's hard. Like when you look at somebody and they look at you like you're a total creep. That's your subjective impression of the way they're looking at you. It's very difficult to just relax with that.

[17:53]

and leap beyond your experience that this person thinks you're a creep and that it hurts. It's hard to relax and leap. But, in fact, as you know, sometimes they're looking at you and they don't think you're a creep anyway. They say, you know, actually, I'm just depressed and I'm just really having a hard time and it's got nothing to do with you. But to grasp that also won't work. When they tell you that and you feel like, well, I'm relieved from my subjective appearance, by now I have a subjective experience of your objective, report to me to grasp that. Also, you missed a point. We have to, like, meet the person and not know what the blankety-blank is going on because we don't. We just have our little... mind our little it is and it is not mine version of it we have our human potentially damaging version of this but this human version of it like it is good or it isn't good or it is bad or isn't but that version itself is okay as long as you don't grasp it or seek something else and if we don't then we leap into the actual relationship where we will practice compassion

[19:12]

where we will be open and caring selflessly. So again, we're back to the very difficult practice of not grasping our mind that says, it is and it isn't, it is and it isn't, it is and it isn't. Yeah, this person is being respectful, this person isn't being respectful. This is not respect, this is respect. This is not kindness, this is kindness. This is our, you know, and to generate these things is not, strictly speaking, only a characteristic of a sentient being. A bodhisattva mind, a Buddha mind could generate these things too. It's the grasping of them that's harmful. And again, once we get beyond grasping, then these things are challenges to deepen our non-grasping. All the times when you didn't grasp support you to continue the practice of not grasping.

[20:16]

Because I think you probably were encouraged by those times when there wasn't grasping and seeking. But still, compared to the strength of the habit, we're really challenged to adopt this new mode. Amy? Amy? There was a time when that hand was raised, I thought. Yeah. Okay, there's a situation of a bodhisattva entering renunciation with some gaining idea or expectation. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. The attitudinal difference is that in the first case... Actually, in the first case, the practice is also there, but it's...

[21:36]

It's not working as fully as in the second case. Yeah? Pardon? So here's what I understand your question to be. If in the case where there was a realization of this third kind of renunciation, and the third kind of renunciation then naturally opens up to everything, including the arrival of the phenomena of an approach to practice, approach to virtue with gaining idea. So then this state of renunciation meets renunciation. Or enters into that situation. Or that situation comes to this state of renunciation. Okay?

[22:42]

And then you're saying, would there be some attitude there? And I would say, in regression there would be attitude. In non-regression there would be no attitude. And so if you want... So the practice doesn't have an attitude. It just... What do you call it? It just grows... on being tested by these opportunities. So, the great practice of renunciation grows on being tested by beings in all different levels of renunciation and even, you might say, prior to renunciation. The practice grows on those who are into renunciation a little bit, a lot. It grows on beings who are not into renunciation. So all these different dimensions of renunciation enter us into a practice which grows on all beings' activity. And after completing the full circuit and having all three operating together, the practice itself, the actual practice which is all three working together, it has no attitude about the current gift

[23:57]

And at the beginning, you know, so before there was even renunciation, the practice was there too. And the practice that was there then also had no attitude about that beginning stage. And the practice was there helping that person enter the practice. The practice is not, okay, I give up. Okay, I give up is a subjective experience that's part of the practice in the sense of it's part of the fuel for practice. Judgments and subjective experiences are necessary for the practice to grow, but the subjective experiences aren't the practice. But the practice is in some place other than the subjective experiences. But the subjective experiences are what the practice... It's the food for the practice. They're the blood of the practice. Like, you know, deluded beings are Buddha's blood, are Buddha's life.

[25:05]

But Buddha is not an attitude about sentient beings. Buddha is a relationship with the sentient beings. It is the relationship which will mature sentient beings. That's what Buddha is. Buddha is not a subjective experience. Buddha isn't like a state that somebody has. I mean, Buddhas do have a state. Fine. So you have a state, they have a state. And some people talk about the state that Buddha has, which is fantastic. But what's really great about Buddhas is not their state, but the kind of relationships they have with people. And the kind of relationships they have are that people get lifted up and carried into the practice. So, a person who hasn't even quite, who's starting to practice but still with a gaining idea, the Buddha comes, and the kind of relationship the Buddha has with that person is that the Buddha has whatever subjective experiences, okay? Like, this person's really a great beginner, or this person's like a low-quality beginner.

[26:09]

But those subjective experiences, I'm not saying Buddha has those, but those attitudes are not the Buddha, not the main thing. The main thing is the relationship that the Buddha has with that person, which is that that person is brought into the way by that relationship. And the Buddha has mostly dived into that relationship. And the self that the Buddha has is just more material to feed the relationship. I'm happy with what I said. I think that, you know, this is like, you know, basically I'm talking about the inconceivable liberation of a bodhisattva. So, you know, this isn't... We're walking around something ungraspable, inconceivable, metaphysical, not a psychological realm, but it completely interpenetrates the psychological realm. The psychological realm is totally...

[27:11]

food for it. So we need to be great psychologists, bodhisattvas do. But it isn't the psychology that we're trying to, like, fix up. Psychology, happy psychology, sick psychology, whatever it is, you know, we don't grasp or cling to it. And in this openness, there is the unhindered caring. So one of the expressions from Confucianism is that a person who has this rend, they put it like, they don't have anything that they don't love. There's no beings they don't love because their love is selfless. There's nobody and nothing they don't love. But this is not a psychological experience. Psychological experiences are the things which have no limit on and which you love all of those psychological experiences.

[28:16]

But the love is not a psychological experience. And if you have a psychological experience of love, fine. That's one of the things which this relationship grows on. The same way if you have a psychological experience of not liking something. So, of course, there's no grasping or rejecting of anything in this relationship. And actually, in all relationships, there's no grasping or rejection. In a relationship, it's stuff there. You got it. You can't get away from it. Yes. Yes. What would be the difference of someone that is actually an art line? Yes. Let's see. Let's see, it's kind of... This question maybe deserves another class, but anyway, I'll just say, you know, I'll just talk about this for an hour and a half, okay?

[29:32]

But basically, the question is, could Arhat go through this renunciation course? Couldn't they? It looked almost like they could. I would say that... Supposedly, it is possible to attain arhatship while understanding the selflessness of the person. And the selflessness of the person means that, you know, all those mind patterns that promote yourself, you would renounce. But there's another level of selflessness which supposedly some arhats have not attained, which is selflessness of things. And in order to understand selflessness of things, it is being proposed by some people that you must practice these, in some sense, that second phase of renunciation where you're doing all these virtues with no gaining idea and giving over the merit, which generates more merit, and giving over the merit, which generates more merit, that you have to do all those practices in order to get to the place where you realize the selflessness of persons and things.

[30:47]

So the third level of renunciation, if we understand that it means that you've realized the selflessness of persons and things, then arhat will not attain that. Because in order to attain the selflessness of things, you need to generate tremendous amount of virtuous practice, which arhats do not need to do in order for personal liberation. But there is the case of the Buddha, who attains Buddhahood and Arhatship at the same time. So it is possible to attain Buddhahood and Arhatship at the same time. But if you attain only Arhatship, then we don't have this third kind of renunciation. Because the third kind of renunciation, by definition, will be off unless you go back and engage with the most deluded people again, where Arhats do not have that commitment. They don't need, our hearts do not have to like, after they're able to like check out completely of existence, they don't have to like go back into existence to check to see if their checkout was right.

[31:58]

If they get out, they say, fine, I'm free. And that was enough for Buddha. To liberate those individuals was what he was wanting to do. But to be a Buddha, you have to check your liberation to see if it also will stand up when you go back into these states. So that's why I would say there would be a difference. Those are bodhisattvas who are slipping. I mean, they could be arhats who are stuck, or they could be bodhisattvas who are stuck, either way. Yeah. I would say you might be able to get to the third stage, but without the bodhisattva vow and bodhisattva momentum, you might stop there. But bodhisattvas can't stop there. They have to go back to the first stage.

[32:59]

The first stage is the medicine for the third stage. And bodhisattvas have to take the first stage. They have to go back and get stimulated by the ordinary suffering of beings again. Otherwise, by definition, their practice has slipped. Their vow has slipped. So their vow keeps them from stopping. Whereas arhats could stop at that point and bail out at that point. I think they could reach it, but in some sense, we could also just say that they couldn't. What we mean by the third one is that when they moved into the second one, they stopped being Arhats. Because in the first one, you could have Arhatship. We could say Arhatship occurred in the first one. That when they practiced, they were practicing virtues. Our hearts do practice virtues. They do all the virtues. Our hearts practice giving. Our hearts practice precepts. Our hearts practice patience.

[34:00]

Our hearts practice enthusiasm. Our hearts practice concentration. So... We could say that the arhat stage could be attained at the first level because they're practicing all these virtues and then they have no attachment to these virtues. They have no attachment to meditation. So they have no attachment to their wisdom either. So we could have arhatship happen at the first stage and understand the second stage as the extensive practices of bodhisattvas that they do before they have understood the emptiness of things. They have understood the emptiness of self before the second stage. And so they've understood the emptiness of self in the first stage. In the second stage, they move into, while understanding the person is empty, they still think there's a difference between the person and others. You can understand that the person is empty, but still think that there's some distinction between this empty person and other empty persons. You still don't understand that there's no other. So they're practicing in that realm, developing great virtues, and then in the third stage, completely realize that all the practices are empty.

[35:08]

And then their activity's totally unhindered. So I guess that's what I would do, is make the arhat the first, after attaining the first stage. Okay, now it's getting to the bewitching hour, quarter of 11. Thanks for the question, Helen. But should we stop now? Wanna stop? Is this enough? Huh? The real bitch, you're always 11? What do you want to do? Do you want to go a little longer or not? What? Kind of not sure. Maybe if you screamed, that would help. It's so hot up here. Maybe I'm a bodhisattva. living in hell here for your sake. Yes? Yeah, you're wondering?

[36:31]

Yeah, I'm hoping so. Because as he said, this belief in the substantial separation of self and other is like extremely deep and unconscious and it's called innate, you know. It doesn't kick in right away. But if you live to one and a half and you have a nice mommy and daddy, it kicks in. So some people have the innate capacity, but they don't have enough love to get the neural stimulation to precipitate it. But if you have a decent childhood, you develop it. And it's very deep and unconscious. And it requires, I would think that's one of the points, is that you cannot uproot this thing consciously. We have to work at it indirectly. Because whenever you go at it directly, you can't go deep enough. However, we must also go at it directly. We have to be willing to decide to do the practice.

[37:34]

We have to be willing to do that, which is... Totally dualistic, but we have to get dirty in order to go through this process. We have to decide, which means I have to decide. It's an illusion, but I have to go through the illusion in order for the practice to happen. If I'm unwilling to do that, it won't work. Max? It's inconsistent. Right. Yeah, I think, right. So, the path of inconceivable liberation is somewhat disturbing. The path of conceivable liberation is disturbing too, it's just disturbing in a different way. But inconceivable liberation is a new variety of disturbance and new set of subjectively difficult experiences.

[38:38]

If you have the conceivable liberation process, it has its tough points too. like the teacher telling you that you're totally deluded, and then you're trying to understand that in a way that's comfortable. And then maybe not being able to, or being successful, and the teacher saying, nice going, you took that as a compliment, that was very good. You're really a good student. And then maybe somehow you can't quite feel good about that. So working with your subjective experiences as it gauges how you're doing, it is uncomfortable too, in case you haven't noticed. And if it's not, it will be pretty soon. Then working with it. The inconceivable realm of your actual relationships, which opens up to you when you start letting go of primarily orienting towards grasping and seeking. But again, I have to decide, egoistically, I have to decide to practice not grasping and seeking, even though it's not going to work. I still have to do it.

[39:39]

Because I have to start with the first level of renunciation. Now, I could do that without any expectation of success. That would be good, but I might not be able to. So I have to do it that way. And then you start moving into inconceivable liberation. It's going to be a new set of uneasinesses. But those uneasinesses are not the practice. Those are just subjective versions of your actual relationship, which is growing and and you're letting it to be a little out of control. And that's a good sign. It shows you're relaxing. You're not keeping your relationship with beings in a nice little package. You're letting it get a little messy. You're letting it get a little dirty. And you're feeling upset, but you're not trying to get back to where you felt more in control again. You're actually letting go of control of your experiences that you use to judge how you're doing. Now, you still may be going ahead and using your experience to judge how you're doing, like sitting up in the meditation hall, having experience, and think, now, this kind of experience seems like I'm doing pretty well.

[40:45]

And then you might go tell your teacher, and your teacher might say, yeah, that does sound really good, but really where the practice is at for you is to let go of using that as, you know, being into judging what your practice is all the time. Like, again, it's normal human activity to be judging, using things to judge. This is the practice. This isn't the practice. This is your normal thing. We're talking about Getting over that. We're talking about, I'm so over that. You know, I'm so over that. Oh, so over that. I mean, there was a time when I was going through some difficulty, you know, when it was kind of like I knew it wasn't good for me, but I was still into it. But I'm over it. It was really bad. You know, I did it for eons. I'm over it. I have my new problems. But, you know, there are problems with not doing that, which I really prefer. And I'm really, like, over-preferring it, too. So it's a new... It is difficult.

[41:51]

But I think that's what I'm recommending to you. And me. Shall we stop now? ...of the renunciation... So, the third one is sometimes called the great. The second one is called the middle. And the third one, the character for it means lower. But also, it means on the ground. The first one. The first one is like, it's the real grounding, you know. The middle one is like the heart. The top one is like the sky. It surrounds the whole process.

[42:33]

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