Is it recording? It was, and then you turned it off. And now it's recording again? Someone said to me, this morning did you say that all living beings are bodhisattvas? And I said, yes. And I think the person said, does that mean that that the Bodhi mind, the thought of enlightenment, is in everybody? And I think I said, no. Not all sentient beings have the thought of enlightenment in their consciousness. The thought of enlightenment is actually like a thought in your consciousness, which is sometimes there and sometimes not.

[01:11]

It's the thought, I wish to become perfectly enlightened in order to benefit all beings. But that thought isn't in the minds of all living beings. And those who have the thought in their mind, I'm suggesting to you, such a thought, they're bodhisattvas. And those who don't have that thought in their mind, they're bodhisattvas. They're bodhisattvas in the form of bodhisattvas who don't have the thought of enlightenment. At some point in their evolution, that thought will arise. In consciousness it will arise. And then It seems like once it arises, it is easy to lose it.

[02:15]

So once it arises, it has to be cared for like a baby. And you care for it with all the bodhisattva practices. Before it arises, you don't have to take care of it. because it hasn't arisen. But once it arises, now you have a fragile, very precious seed of Buddhahood. And when that seed gets planted in a sentient being who is actually on the Bodhisattva path, now things start developing in a new way. And again, that seed can sprout, and if it's not cared for, it can wilt. Sometimes the image is used that when that bodhi mind, when that thought of enlightenment first arises, it's like a candle flame, which can be blown out by a gentle wind.

[03:21]

But it can grow into a more and more, you know, more than a candle flame, it can grow into like a huge fire. And then when winds blow on it, even strong winds, it just gets stronger. It's kind of like the thought of living my life for the welfare of all beings, and in particular for each of you, arises, and I'm very happy about it, and then one of you insults me and I think, I think I changed my mind. I'm not going to live for this person who is treating me this way. But when it gets stronger, and then people are not kind to you, it just gets stronger. I should say, when it gets strong enough, then all people on the bodhisattva path who are coming to you and saying, I'm not on the bodhisattva path, it just makes this bodhicitta get stronger.

[04:29]

How wonderful! There's a chapter in the Lotus Sutra called Never Disparaging Bodhisattva. And everybody he saw, he said, you know, you're going to become Buddha. And you know, they kind of said, who are you to tell me what I'm going to become? And they gave him a hard time, and he just I ain't going to disparage you even though you're being mean to me. You are going to become Buddha. Oh yeah? Yeah, you are. I'm not going to disparage you no matter how mean you are to me. Oh yeah? And he never did. But he had quite a fierce fire of bodhicitta.

[05:34]

But whether we have bodhicitta or not, We're all on the same path, the same practice, the same enlightenment. But we're in different stages of fire. And once the fire gets going, it's like everything feeds it, but before that we have to Give it generosity. You have to be ethical, and patient, and diligent, and calm with it. Otherwise, we can get distracted from it. Even though the thought's there, we can get distracted. That's what I wanted videotaped. The rest of it, I don't know, we'll see.

[06:39]

Anything else you want to bring up today in our last meeting of 2015? Yes? I actually have a sweatshirt that I also got from Regulj, and it says, Just Being. Did you get that in the bookshop too? Yeah, I did. I don't know, I just spent a fair amount of time there. In stillness. But they're from Kassahara, these ones. My question to you is, can you say something about that? Just being? Just sitting seems more... Well, similar to what I said earlier, if there's being and the being is allowed to just be

[07:56]

If the being is treated with justice, that would be good. Whatever kind of being it is, even an unjust being, Is it just being or just be? Being. So to try to learn to let things be themselves. Let being be being, let being be itself. That could be a way to understand the expression just being. Yes? Then what if, let's say, my being is just destructive?

[09:12]

Well, I just said it a moment ago. Whatever it is. Whatever it is. Then I feel it's not beneficial. What? It's not beneficial. That's another being. Quote, it's not beneficial. Let that be. Whatever it is, treat it with justice. Be just with it. Be just to it. In other words, be ethical with it. If you see appearances of ethics, be ethical with them. If you see appearances of injustice and unethical behavior, be ethical with them. If you see hate in your heart, don't hate it. I don't necessarily see hate, it's more stubbornness.

[10:18]

Stubbornness? Oh, that's a good thing to be just with. Like, for example, don't slander stubbornness. Now you could say, oh, that's stubbornness. But do you say it in such a way that everybody comes to support and be compassionate with this stubbornness? Or do you say it in such a way that everybody says, okay, let's abandon this stubbornness. Let's maroon it from all compassion. No. Hey folks, we've got some stubbornness here for us all to be kind to. So you are recognizing it, but you're not putting it down. You're not besmirching it. You're noticing stubbornness, inflexibility. And also we don't say, well I'm not stubborn, and you are.

[11:22]

We don't praise ourselves at this expense. We also don't try to possess it. And we don't hate it. We don't hate stubbornness. Like some people who are trying to teach Dharma meet students who are stubbornly refusing to accept the teaching. This is an opportunity for the teacher not to hate the stubborn student. Not hate the stubborn student. who's asking for compassion, not hate. If I stubbornly refuse to practice these teachings, if I stubbornly refuse to listen to you, will love keep coming? I wonder. I'm going to try again. That was actually kind of loving, but I'm going to do it again to see if I get another one. I think you'll love me if I do just what you want me to do.

[12:26]

If I'm your idea of a good Zen student, then the teacher will like me. But what if I'm not going along with the teacher's idea of a good Zen student, will the teacher still be compassionate to me? Let's find out. Whatever! We give it compassion, no matter how terrible it is. Emerald? Just being. I had always seen it as like being as in like awareness and the awareness being inclusion of whatever is. So it's just like putting out there the thoughts of the The way consciousness is, is that it is actually all-inclusive, and one of the things it includes is exclusiveness.

[13:43]

So within consciousness we have inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion? Hi! Exclusion? Hi! Consciousness doesn't Consciousness is like the sky, you know? It actually accepts everything. However, in accepting everything, it's got some pretty tough customers living inside of it. Like exclusion, abandonment, disrespect, fear, stubbornness, rigidness, strongly adhering to one's beliefs, and hating those who don't agree with you. All this stuff can arise in consciousness. Consciousness is a place for all these things to arise, which we can then learn how to deal with in compassionate ways. In this way, the entire universe gets purified if we learn how to be compassionate with whatever appears in consciousness.

[14:51]

And whatever appears there, or much of what appears there, challenges our compassion. And sometimes when our challenge is compassion, it hesitates for a moment, and then another thing arises, which again challenges our compassion. So like we say, something comes up, turning away, isn't right, And grasping and trying to control it isn't right either. And this is instructions for how to learn this intimate communication in consciousness, which includes all these challenging... all the challenges are welcome in consciousness. At least the ones that are here now. And then those go away and other ones come. but it's hard to meet all the challenges, and when we fail to meet the challenge, then we have our failure to be compassionate to what consciousness is actually allowing to appear, then we have that challenge.

[16:09]

Does that address what you brought up? Yes? Really? Great. Could you wait a second? Robin had her hand up a little ahead of you. This might sound cheeky, but I mean it sincerely. Do you think Donald Trump is asking for compassion when he speaks to people? I think Donald Trump is asking for compassion, yes. I think all living beings are on the Bodhisattva path, and they're all asking for compassion. And when they get it, it will be good. And it may be hard to see it right away, but if they keep getting it, they will eventually have this thought arising in their mind, which is,

[17:18]

I want to devote my life to the welfare of all people. I want to not be a bigot. I don't know what bigot means, but I get the feeling that a bigot is somebody who wants to help some people, but not all people. And so we have many stories in our tradition, and not just in our tradition, other traditions have stories of people who really seem to be stubbornly not wanting to be kind to some people. And then their request for compassion was heard by somebody and they got compassion. And they got it again and again and again. And finally they said, OK, I give up. I cannot hate anymore. There's a story like that in Being Upright about this leader of the clan who hated everybody.

[18:29]

He was taught to hate everybody. And some people, some Jewish people decided to just keep giving him love. And he finally couldn't resist it anymore. And his hatred melted away in that love. But they had to apply it over and over for him to stop resisting it. And so we're asking for love and when it comes, we sometimes may not seem to say thank you right away. But we want another chance. even though we slam the door, we want somebody to knock. Could I talk to you? No! Please? All right. Yes? I've heard that there are two kinds of people in the world.

[19:37]

Those who divide people into groups and those who don't. That could be two types, yeah. Which one are you? I'm the one who, I'm in the group of people, of dividing people into groups. And I see, in your two groups, I see nobody in one of your groups. And a lot of people in the other group. So bodhisattvas are those who want to help people who are dividing people into groups, be compassionate to the stress of a categorical consciousness, which groups and compares, that's part of consciousness, is to make discriminations.

[20:38]

And by being kind to this discriminating consciousness, we realize the singing of the wooden man and the dancing of the stone woman, which is not within reach of discrimination. But if we aren't kind to discrimination, the miracle of of our bodhisattva path is somewhat... its maturity is stressed, is compromised. If we're kind to all discriminations, we realize non-discriminating wisdom. But as Suzuki Rishi said, non-discrimination does not mean not discriminating. It means to study everything. To study the discriminations, no matter what they are. Stubborn, excellent, below average.

[21:45]

To study everyone and not make exceptions about what we study. We study everything. In this way, we don't discriminate about what we study and this non-discriminating wisdom comes and then non-discriminating compassion. So if there's some place where no discriminations are made, I don't know about it, but those people don't need help. I don't know, you know. If they ever want to come to visit, you know, they're welcome to come. You're teaching us to meet everything with compassion. Can you say once again, how do we build up our compassion? How do we build it? Yeah, how do we strengthen it? You mean, if it's already there, how do you strengthen it? Yeah, so that it can continue to grow. We do it by practicing generosity with whatever comes, whatever arises here inside the consciousness,

[22:53]

And also whatever arises inside the consciousness, which looks like it's outside the consciousness. So like right now, inside my consciousness, there's a woman with your name. And so I want to practice compassion towards you and towards me who's talking to you. I want to be equally compassionate to you and Veronica and Romi, and I want to do that. And if I think I'm being more compassionate to you than Homa, I want to be compassionate to my, what do you call it, my partiality, which I don't really want to be partial. I want to give everybody my full compassion, but if I notice I'm giving some people more than others, I want to be compassionate to my unfairness, to my injustice. So I practice generosity towards that, I accept I welcome everybody. That's what I want to train at when I train at generosity.

[23:56]

And I want to be generous towards any imbalance in my generosity. Next, again, practice ethics, which is justice. Practice justice with every being inwardly and every being which appears to be outwardly but really isn't. Be careful of every action. and then be patient with suffering, with my suffering and other people's suffering, but particularly with mine. Maybe other people's suffering I can be a little impatient with, like I don't want them to suffer any longer, but mine I have to kind of like, okay, I'm not going to get into longer or shorter, I'm just going to be present with it. and then be diligent and keep in touch with my wish to be compassionate, and then develop samadhi, develop concentration. These are compassion practices.

[24:58]

Sometimes people don't put samadhi in the compassion part, but I think samadhi straddles the compassion practices and the wisdom practices. They want to be calm with our compassionate practices and calm with our wisdom practices. So, in a sense, people may sort of push the Samadhi over to the concentration, over to the wisdom a little bit, because the wisdom we're talking about always has compassion, always has Samadhi with it. But the other practices don't always have Samadhi. So we can be practicing generosity or ethics, but not yet be in samadhi. But we can also be in samadhi and practice generosity and ethics, which of course, then the ethics and the samadhi bloom more fully, when we're like, undistracted and flexible with our ethics.

[26:07]

how wonderful that would be, to be in ethic samadhi, to never get distracted and also be not uptight about what it was. So people could say, you know, you're really unethical, and you could say, thank you for your gift. Your comment is really welcome, rather than I know better than you about ethics. How dare you? I almost feel like in some ways it's harder to practice compassion. To me, Trump is a figure of great expressiveness.

[27:15]

And it's almost harder to practice compassion with injustice when it's quiet or when it's like hiding. And the expressive injustice is almost easier for us to come forward and be a bit generous. Somebody said, I heard on the radio yesterday, somebody said, this person who we call Trump, he really is addicted to attention. He's calling for attention. And I think he wants compassionate attention so he can wake up from his dream. We all want to wake up from our dream and he's asking, in some sense, more strongly for attention than most of us do. And he's getting it. Now with this flood of attention, could we send the kind of attention that will wake him up from his dream?

[28:22]

Wouldn't that be wonderful if suddenly he woke up on national television and finally saw that all these people that he wants to get rid of are his dear family, and he wants to help those people that he's trying to push away. Wouldn't that be great for him to wake up and everybody witnessed that? Meantime, at that same moment, he might cease to be a possible candidate for the presidency. But still, it would be a wonderful thing for the world to see that this man woke up, this American who had these views, woke up from the delusion of that. And for the whole world to see, oh yeah, that was a delusion and he woke up. Oh, how about us? What delusions do we have about America?

[29:26]

And who's going to help us wake up from our ideas of America? If they can wake up from their delusions about us, maybe we can wake up from our delusions about them. This is what we need for peace. We need to wake up from our ideas about each other. We don't need to get rid of the ideas. We just need to wake up to that's what they are. They're not realities. I have this idea. Our neighbor asked us to leave by 3. By 3? Yes, he did. He asked us to leave by 3 and you said 4. So it's now going on 4.10. I would really like to give him the gift of the parking spots for his guests. All right, let's go. We won't even chat today. We'll just go.

[30:24]

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