So tonight I wanted to just go through a little review of what we did last week and then talk some about Dana, finish up with Dana and then talk about what our experiences of that have been and then go on to Sheila. But before And I just want to say a couple of things about our process that encourage people to watch their participation. If you're a person for whom it is easy to talk and you talk a lot, watch that. And if you're a person who really holds back and deprives others of your thoughts, please Watch that. And hopefully this is a really manageable group and we can't just go around and have check-ins.

[01:09]

So does anybody have anything on their mind from last week? into present, okay. So there are two people, is that right, who were not here last week? Three. So last week we talked some about the historical background that this class is coming from. The early teachings, the early, what are sometimes referred to as the lesser vehicle teachings. It's now easier to call them the Theravadin because the Theravadin is the only school from that period that they stand, I think.

[02:13]

We talked about them and then the difference that occurred around the first century when the Mahayana began. and the Bodhisattva who embodies, who is the conveyor of the Mahayana practice. So, on the one hand, in our own practices we have the analytic side, where we are mindful, where we study the Dharma, where we make an effort all the time to know what we're doing and to increase the field of our Dharma knowledge. And then on the other hand we have the more intuitive side where we are depending on what we didn't talk about last week at all but

[03:15]

Bodhicitta, just the natural arising of the thought of enlightenment, where we are being awake to our fundamental Buddha nature, to our relatedness, and using our awakened mind. So, that is the one vehicle Mahayana teaching. And our one vehicle is our zazen vehicle, that in sitting zazen we are manifesting the identity of practice and enlightenment. We're not trying to achieve anything, we are just sitting. To attain the bodhisattva depends on prajnaparamita. That's the bodhisattva way.

[04:18]

And to talk about it sounds very grand, and we all have our very grounded experiences of arsazana, which fluctuates. So the Paramitas are the Bodhisattva, the way the Bodhisattva trains. The way the Bodhisattva trains in transcendence, or trains to be an enlightening being. And so the Paramitas, the gone beyonds, the transcendent acts, have this kind of dual, also have this dual quality that on the one hand they are without base. You know, if we read these little excerpts from the Diamond Sutra that describe the different paramitas, they're quite repetitive in this aspect.

[05:24]

And incidentally I, in the longer Diamond Sutra off-print, you're missing pages 94 and 95, I think, and they're here. So the Diamond Sutra is rather repetitive as you read the Paramitas in it. They all seem to be, they all are saying, they're slightly different versions of the same idea, that the Bodhisattva has these qualities, is giving, is practicing discipline and so on and so on, knowing that there's no such thing as the person practicing say in giving, there's no person who's giving, there's no receiver, and there's nothing to give. So, all these paramitas have this transcendent quality of being based on emptiness.

[06:28]

So, what's going on? Being based on non-attachment. And then, they also have the qualities of effort. So, we can look at our practice of, say, giving, and we can think about it in a a more detailed way and think of the different qualities of giving and kind of measure ourselves and set ourselves some intention of being out there a little bit more. And so those are the two sides. But on the other hand, we can think about giving and we can make programs for ourselves and set our intentions and so on, but if we really begin making rules for ourselves about giving, then we begin to violate the Paramita.

[07:31]

If we take it too seriously, if we attach to what we're doing, then we are not within that, we've violated the mystery. of that quality. Does anyone else have another way of saying what I just said? There are lots of ways of saying it. So thinking a little bit more thinking a little bit more about giving. There are various lists of what is giving about. So we can say that we give material goods. We can say that we give the Dharma. We can say that we give our own understanding.

[08:34]

That we give Fearlessness. Now, fearlessness is a particularly interesting one and it's especially a Buddhist giving, you know, and it's mentioned in the Heart Sutra. Without any hindrance, no fears exist far away from every perverted view. One dwells in nirvana. So when we are not trammeled and bothered and flustered by our hindrances, of course, there's nothing to protect and there's nothing to fear. And this giving of fearlessness is a wonderful gift. Now when Buddha was particularly beset by the forces of Mara, His last-ditch response was to touch the ground, and the ground rose up, and Mara was vanquished.

[09:53]

Not dispelled, he made friends with Mara, but he had no problems. So it'll be interesting, as the evening goes on, for us to share what our experiences of fearlessness are. When I think of fearlessness, I think of actually being grounded so that whatever is going on is just going on and the mind isn't caught or preoccupied with any particular angle and even if there are conflicting, confusing things going on, just The state of being grounded enables one to go moment by moment by moment and respond in a kind of broad-angled way which is not fearful.

[11:02]

And when you see other people acting fearlessly It's very instructive, very encouraging, very instructive. And again, when I see people acting in situations where I know I carry some fear, and I see them free from it, I really feel as if I learn something. Hard to say just what, but that I've learned something. So I thought that we could go over what Trungpa says about Dana.

[12:11]

Did most people have a chance to read that? Yeah. Because he brings up these nice examples. And so I would like to go to his examples, and then we can go, and then we can talk, hopefully each person sharing something about their experience of the Dhana. And I think it's here, he uses, I referred to it last week too, that the Bodhisattva is not really aware of him herself, so compassion has a greater scope to expand and develop, because here there is no radiator, but only radiation.

[13:17]

That's a very nice metaphor, I think, for a transcendent act. That's page 37, top of page 37. All right, so then on page 38, He talks about the aspect of dana which is a generosity, means not possessing. And he tells the story of the beggar woman who was one of the poorest beggars in India because she was so poor in kind and also poor in mind. She wanted so much, and this made her feel even poorer. We've all been there. One day she heard the Buddha was invited to Anapandika's palace in Jeta Grove. Anapandika was a wealthy householder and a great donor, so she decided to follow Buddha because she knew that he would give her food, whatever was left over.

[14:19]

She attended the ceremony of offering food to the Sangha, to Buddha, and then she sat there waiting until Buddha saw her. He turned around and asked her, what do you want? Of course he knew, but she had to actually admit it and say it. It's a very nice story about the very weak position one can fall into, you know, just wanting, and just wanting something from the very powerful person, and not even able to say what one wants, but just kind of sitting there wanting. And she said, I want food. I want you to give me what is left over. A modest request. And Buddha said, in that case, you must first say no. You have to refuse when I offer it to you. He held out the food to her, but she found it very difficult to say no.

[15:21]

She realized that all in her whole life she had never said no. When anybody had anything or offered her anything, she always said, yes, I want it. So she found it very difficult to say no, as she was not at all familiar with that word. After great difficulty, she finally did say no, and then Buddha gave her the food. And through this, she realized that the real hunger inside her was her desire to own, grasp, possess, and want. And this is an example of how one can practice generosity. And from that point of view, one can practice generosity towards oneself because the point here is to free oneself from this possessiveness, this continual wanting. So, it seems to me that that's a nice story because For one thing, it's an example of skillful means, the bodhisattva's chief tool.

[16:24]

You know, it's, we commonly get into, fall into the cliche that generosity just means saying yes. And if you say no, you're being in some way stingy. And of course, it's as important That sword has the no side. The sword of wisdom has the no side and it has the yes side. And so how do you wield it? When do you say yes? When do you say no? And very importantly, how do you know where your boundaries are? We say yes and we say no. And if we do it with skill, we know where our boundaries are and where the others begin. And we probably get into as much trouble saying, forgetting, getting the boundaries mixed up and saying yes as we do saying no.

[17:31]

So it's an example of skillful means. It's an example of saying no. And it's a wonderful teaching of looking into the real source of the problem. Just the kind of raw craving that's inside. And it's so hard to look at. And in Zazen, we really get a very good opportunity to look at it. Because our inner teacher doesn't let go of these things. and it's just some craving that comes up and we choose to let it go and not look at it once, it'll come up again and again and again in different ways or maybe the same way until it's right in front of us and we do have an opportunity of just meeting it and being with it and acknowledging it.

[18:39]

And, you know, it's perfectly okay to say that I think we all feel fine saying, I am a person with needs. That's human. But when we say, I am a needy person, that doesn't feel so good. That doesn't feel so good. And so what's the difference? Of course, everyone has needs. And the difference between being a person with needs and being a needy person is that being a needy person is not recognizing the needs. This woman was a needy person. She always wanted, always wanted, and she didn't see that. So the first intervention was, say no. Recognize. Recognize your need. Then something can be done about it. So, earlier in this book, Trungpa talks about the manure field.

[19:53]

Have most of you read the whole book? Yeah. Gee, I have a couple of xeroxes of a whole book. The first couple of chapters are great, too. that we all have this rich manure, and the good practitioners, the beginners feel that the manure is not such great stuff and try to get rid of it, but the more practiced practitioners realize that this is the fertile stuff, and throw it out in a Bodhi field, and then it turns into a very rich practice. Well, I wanted... it's not exactly...

[20:57]

I don't know quite how it follows here, because this woman was not... I want to talk a little bit about shame. This woman was remarkably without shame and that probably was an asset for her. She was just willing to want everything, shamelessly. But I think a lot of us, certainly myself, shame really gets... is a big hindrance to giving. You know, when one walks along the street and encounters street people, for instance, why is it that it is not easy, usually, to stop and make some kind of eye contact, real contact, you know? It's much easier either to hand a quarter or just walk by and and just not make the contact. And I think it's because, I think in myself, it's because I feel shamed.

[22:04]

I feel that person's shame. And the person is ashamed and I have some shame about the whole situation and I don't know, it just evokes, it evokes shame. And of course, a shame, we tend to think of shame as a miserable dharma, one which we would gladly be without. On the other hand, like every other dharma, it's a very valuable dharma, because when we acknowledge that we are ashamed, and it's okay with us to be shamed, then we can really meet people's, other people's suffering. We can be there in our own shame and be vulnerable, be open, be in, really invoke that quality of giving because we're not different.

[23:13]

Does that I don't know how that, maybe as we go around some of you can say what your experience with giving and shame is. Well, the one other story I'd just like to put out for our Exploration is the story on page 39 about the yaks not being attached to one's possessions. It being okay to have possessions as long as we can treat our possessions as a child treats their toys and just freely enjoy them and not attach to them. If somebody asks for a particular object that you like to have with you all the time, there should be no hesitation at all in giving it away.

[24:29]

So, the two brothers. The story in Tibet concerning two brothers, one of whom had 99 yaks, while the other had only one yak. The poor brother was quite content with his one yak. He was quite happy and thought he had great wealth. He had one yak and that was all he needed. It was quite sufficient. He wasn't afraid of losing it, and so on. In fact, his enjoyment of owning it was greater than his fear of losing it. Now that's a nice sentence. That's a nice sentence. What is it? One of the qualities of an enlightened being is to be satisfied with what you have. My mother, my New England mother, says, you are rich in what you can do without. Well, that's kind of a New England approach to it. It has a little pinch, but... Okay, so the one with 99 yaks, he always had to look after them, and generally you find in the highlands of Tibet that there are a lot of wolves, and so on.

[25:46]

There are far more obstacles than there are... in that part of the world. than this when it comes to looking after animals. So one day, the rich brother thought, well, I think I'll ask my brother a favor. You see, he was only afraid of losing his yaks, and he was also very keen on accumulating more of them. And he went to the other brother and said, well, I know you have only one yak, which doesn't make much of a difference to you. So if you didn't have one at all, it wouldn't really matter that much. But if you give me your one yak, then I will have a hundred yaks, which means a great deal to me. I mean, a hundred yaks is really something. If I had that much, I really would be rich and famous. So he did the favor, and the other brother gave up the yak quite easily. He didn't even hesitate, just gave it. And this story became proverbial in Tibet to illustrate that when someone has a lot, he wants more. And when someone has less, he is prepared to give. traveling light.

[26:47]

So, I think we know enough about that to not have to go on and on about it. So, at this point it would be nice to go around and if you have something to say about Donna, about Paramitas, about anything we've talked about, let's just hear where each other are, is. Well, I wasn't here last week, but as soon as I said what the homework was, well, I thought about work. And then I thought about, I immediately thought of the homeless people. And I thought what You know, I didn't grow up like that, and I don't think many of us did grow up seeing on a daily basis people who were living in the streets.

[27:58]

And... I mean, in a way that seemed... I mean, that seemed like it's an incredible opportunity to face things that I don't want to face. I mean what you said was so clear about the difficult thing is really making contact. I mean for a while I would just totally avoid and now I've sort of gradually gotten where more often I will give something than not. But I'm right at that. I mean, it's very difficult to actually make contact. I guess I just... It seems like a very rich kind of thing. I don't really know what more to say about it. And that shame.

[29:04]

What is this shame? Why is that so difficult? I mean, it's so difficult to allow myself to feel that. About a year and a half ago, well, I work at a middle school and The secretary, with whom I interact quite often in the course of the day, is a very difficult person. And a year and a half ago, I mentioned to her that my son became engaged, and she asked me who it was with. So I mentioned to her that it was a girl from Michigan, and whereupon she asked me if she was Japanese, and I said, no, as a matter of fact, she's a Jewish-American girl. And she looked at me eyeball to eyeball and said, you know, if she were my daughter, I would not allow her to marry your son.

[30:12]

And she stunned me and I really wrestled with that for a while because I have to interact with her continually. So I decided that I would be kind to her. nice outfit on and so forth. And in the process of a year going by, I forgot. And I also worked on not attaching to her bigotry and her shallowness. And so I forgot. I became unattached about it. And so when I returned in September, I'd forgotten about her, what she was like. And another teacher had asked me to bring some of the wedding pictures. So I just brought three of my children and my, of my children.

[31:15]

And my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. And she wanted to see them, so I showed it to her. And she said the same thing to me again. So I thought, oh, I'd forgotten about that. And it just made me very aware that I have to start all over again. Very interesting. She said the same thing again this time. But it didn't shock me as much. I didn't feel hurt. She said, why? And I said, well, I taught my children. They could marry anybody they wanted to as long as The person had good character, good inside, an honest person, intelligent, that's all. And same values, and she said, so I have to work on that all over again.

[32:18]

Well, that's a great story. You know, the Prajnaparamita talks about the Bodhisattva continually putting on her armor. And what is a Bodhisattva's armor? you know, it's these paramitas. So it was like you put on your paramita armor and you didn't have much expectation. But you, you forgot. It worked for you. Before I used to attach to thoughts of being, you know, done in or this kind of thing. So I've been working on not attaching to such thoughts. And then, I got done in. It's interesting, I forgot about her. Yeah, you got done in, but it didn't run you over. It didn't penetrate as much. Not likely. Well, that is a very nice example of doing all the work, all the mind training.

[33:21]

Yeah, because it's still her problem, really. Oh yeah, I know that, but it was a great shock to me to be told that my son wasn't worthy of her daughter. She's Italian-American. She would never allow her children to marry a non-Italian-American. Older children. I'm sorry? How old are her children? Her children? In their 30s or 40s. And they obeyed that? Uh-huh. She made herself known. Just remember there are thousands of people who think it, but don't let you know. For me, that would be more dangerous, to be around that kind of environment where people are pretending to be accepting and not really being honest about their feelings.

[34:24]

I don't know what to say about your description of the shame. You know, I always felt that, but I didn't know how to... I didn't understand it until you explained it. The shame. that I felt when I see homeless people. It's hard for me to look at them. And now that you've explained it, I think I have more to work on. Yeah. I just realized it a couple of days ago and yesterday morning I was going into College Avenue and there was a woman who was just getting herself ready with her blankets and her various piles to do her day's work in College Avenue and as I went by she said spare change and I stopped and I gave her a couple of those Berkeley Cares cards. And I didn't, she didn't want to look at me, and I didn't want to look at her, and I went and got bread. And then I remembered, I remembered. So I came back, and I walked slowly in front of her, and she said, spare change.

[35:26]

And I said, but I just gave you something, you remember that? And she looked at me. And then we had a little conversation. Then I asked her how she felt about the cards, and we had a little conversation. And she was fairly incoherent. She said, well, these cards, but a hot meal costs so much money, and marijuana costs so much money, and what can I, I felt very glad that I'd given her cards. But anyway, we did have, we had an amicable exchange, and I certainly felt a lot better. It's so revealing, the way I've been behaving. You know, I voluntarily, a place where we put food in bags and give it to the families that come over. I'm so embarrassed to look. It's like I just want to disappear. I don't know whether it's shame or embarrassment or whether I am thinking, how would I be if I were in that position?

[36:35]

The humiliation of having to accept a charity All of us mixed up. I was born and raised in San Francisco, so you saw men drunk in the gutter, things like that. When I used to go out with my father when I was a little boy, Homelessness is sort of a new phenomenon, I think, for middle class people. And we haven't sort of adopted a strategy on how to deal with it. I think it's one thing, people have always asked for money on the street, but now you have these people who are living on the street.

[37:40]

And it's really, it's different. I found that I feel better about the whole thing when I just give them money and look at them and have a brief air of change and move on. I don't think it's shame, I think it's something, my personal take on this is it's It's sort of a reflection, or it's more fear than it is shame. Like, there, but for the grace of God, go I, sort of thing. Or here, like, the system is stale, and here are these people. And, you know, it's a new phenomenon. The system used to work better, and now it doesn't.

[38:42]

So it's sort of an ominous downsliding, represented by these real human beings who are in front of you. And you want to fix it, of course, but you can't fix it. So, in it, I just say one more thing. In the matter of Dhanai, my personal bias is to do something I visit this friend of mine who has AIDS and is deteriorating rapidly. We talk and I read him stories and I make sure that his legal and financial matters are in order. That makes that sort of experience real to me, as opposed to just donating your time or money.

[40:04]

And what makes it real? Well, because it's a real person that you're in the world with. It's more direct. Well, it's kind of like you're giving yourself, and I think that's, you know, something about what we're talking about brings up for me the notion of, you know, when we're holding back or uncomfortable, there's something, you know, we're protecting some sense of self, that there's some, There's boundaries, and there's mirrors. And we don't want to look at the mirror, because it's us. And that makes us lose our sense of self, the sense of self that we feel safe with.

[41:09]

We don't have some story about it that we feel safe with, and it excludes the things that we don't feel safe with. dualistic thinking, casting off whatever it is that we want to make other, whether it's just the people we don't get along with, or the scary things. And there's this great line here, in page 38, of generosity means not possessing. And I think it means not possessing because there's nothing to possess, nothing to attain, there isn't anything. And we can say that, but to experience it is really quite terrifying. And I think that's part of why this is a lifelong practice.

[42:17]

That's a very nice way of saying it, I think, the mirror. And, of course, it goes back to Indra's net, that our fundamental situation is just being mirrors. But when we do see somebody else as mirroring us, as Charlie and his friend, than to be willing to see the other as mirror. Yeah, then there's some real generosity. So I've been feeling the sweet light. I've been reading all this stuff about transcending generosity. I'm ready to transcend generosity. I can't even get up to generosity. I'm having a bad day and just feeling like nothing's going right. I'm not getting close to generosity, let alone transcending generosity. No, I'm beginning to see why I feel a humiliation.

[43:21]

Because I was in that position myself when I went to the And every time you go to a diaper store for the first time, they charge a higher fee. And I was just so devastated at that time, that period, because I was really short on money, having had so many problems with this nice little living. And for the first time, I experienced such humiliation when I asked the police, couldn't you lower the fee? I started crying. It's the first time I ever had such an experience. And he did it, but I didn't know what a variation really meant. Yeah, well it's wonderful to be, to really feel that and to know it. call the police and get her out of the place.

[44:43]

And I did that, I think, fearlessly. At first, I was frightened to my tech. And then I just stood my ground, stayed calm, centered, and quiet. And nothing happened, but I had to withstand tremendous amount of obscenities. But your fearlessness was communicated. And you stood your ground, and you kept your boundaries. Yeah. The boundary keeping is very hard, often. And ironically, that's part of what makes it possible to do the mirroring. You know, even a lake has a shore. The mirror has something.

[45:44]

It's a frame. Yeah. [...] When I get swallowed up in my shame about you have nothing and I have too much, there's no mirror. How about because you're too busy feeling bad for yourself? When do you stop giving them? It's difficult to discriminate about, you know? Well, it certainly is. You know, we have all the 12-step program ideology. This is very puzzling to me, this whole subject. It sounds uncomfortably close to Christian self-sacrifice. And in the Christian tradition I was raised in, that was very unhealthy.

[46:46]

It was not healthy at all. And I don't see the difference here. I don't see that you're allowed to have boundaries. It sounds as though there's a behavior that is considered acceptable and it isn't one I want to do. Well, it's always a potential confusion to confuse the practical and the transcendent. You know, the primary example is, well, if a person is enlightened, they can do anything. Now, our next, our next paramita is the precepts. So, on the one hand, a real bodhisattva knows no limit to her, there is no limit to her generosity.

[47:54]

But, we have to realize that we are not there and it's a terrible mistake to think we are when we're not. So we're always having to practice with the first rule is, who are we? Who am I? What can I honestly give being who I am? And if I give more than that, there's some violence in it. When we first started talking about giving, I was thinking the giving I am learning is to not interfere, to let people have their own experience and learn something. Giving them their space. Right. And that is not my inclination and that's not my conditioning. My conditioning is to rescue. See, I think that's the point. The sutras are talking about the unconditioned.

[48:56]

not the conditioned. And whatever your conditioning is, that's what practice is trying to undo, in a way, and to get you to look at and to go beyond. And so it was a wonderful article that Rita Gross wrote for Hawaii years ago. It's in that book on women and Zen. she talked about how for American, for women, that all kinds of humility and self-sacrifice and all that was the condition of personality. And that for people who were conditioned that way, to do more of that was not practiced. That if you'd been conditioned to be arrogant and selfish, maybe these words would give you some clue But the key is in the unconditioned.

[49:59]

And to get away from conditioned, reflexive, dualistic thinking and behavior. So your skillful means is to step back. It is. It's far easier for me to jump in there and risk you. So each of us has to discover what our own skillful means are. I had a question, too. How do you stop wanting? I think that is so close to the survival drive that it's hard. And I feel like I've been conditioned and bombarded all my life to want what you should have and what is just the bare minimum, isn't it? When we lived in Santa Barbara, we lived in Summerland, and I used to drive through Montecito, which is the old Santa Barbara money, and people lived in armed fortresses.

[51:05]

There are these huge estates, and they have... The Yak story. Yeah. And I was thinking one day, how can they stand to live like this? This affluence is obscene. They must feel terrible. But I had the nicest house in town, in Summerland, and lived better than my neighbors, and I thought, so I'm relative. I've been conditioned to think that this is the bare minimum. This is the level that I'm used to, and yet people around me are living with far less. Well, the question is, what is addiction about? You know, what is the need? around which we practice addiction. Could you say some more about that? have been through these programs.

[52:08]

Well addiction to me is anything I do to suppress awareness. Okay. And that can be shopping or that can be pot or that can be eating. So below the craving there's a suppression of awareness of what you're really needing. I mean if you're walking through town and you're window shopping or thinking about getting an ice cream or something that you know you don't need, then what is the state of mind that you're in that is prior to that grasp? You know, like in the Enneagram we were doing, what is the background state of mind? If when one is really in touch with the background of the moment, for that particular hour. When you're really in touch with it, you don't need to grasp.

[53:09]

But we have been so conditioned in our consumer society to believe that, you know, if there's a speck of pain, what can we get? Yes. Yes. So we're always having to reverse that kind of compulsive, non-thinking reach to go back to what is the state of mind that wants, and once we befriend the state of mind, once we accept, acknowledge the state of mind that is behind that, we don't need anything. And the way you do that is to pay attention to your body, right? I think so. Body-mind, yeah, right. But 12-step programs must have things to say about the basis of addiction? Not necessarily. I mean, this is very clear.

[54:13]

I mean, actually, it's nothing I didn't know, but it's something that I have to continually keep hearing. I think in some 12-step, there's a tendency to try and transcend it. Yeah. Be the bodhisattva. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, something we tend to do with this because of our culture. You know, there's a tendency to want to just use this teaching to sort of leap over all the discomfort, rather than to just kind of sit here with it. Or replace it with another one. Right. Somehow a more socially, you know, actually psychologically acceptable one. Yeah, something just a little uncomfortable. I've never cleaned my oven unless there was something more horrible that I should have been doing. And that relates to meeting people on the street and just being in that discomfort and looking at someone in the eye and taking the time to exchange opinions.

[55:21]

And sharing one's shame. I mean, I had this experience recently where I was walking down the street and someone asked me for money and I said, no, I didn't have any. And when I got by, I realized I had a whole bunch of change in my pocket. And I turned around and went back and I looked him straight in the eye and I said, you know, I do have money in my pocket. Do you need it? And he said, what? And I said, do you need it? And he kind of smiled and he said, well, yeah, I kind of do. And then we had this little conversation and I gave him a little money and I went on my way and I thought, It's just so easy to just not look. And it's just so easy to get on the track. And it's really, I find it's a really good practice for me to stop and look him in the eye. And I had this other experience about a week ago where I was walking down the street and some guy asked me for money and I stopped and had a little conversation with him. I gave him a little change and I started to walk again and there was this woman

[56:25]

next to me, who apparently had been watching me, and she was quite elderly and quite well-dressed, and she said, you know, you really shouldn't give that guy money. And I looked at her, and I looked her in the eye, and I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, he's just going to use it for booze or drugs. And I stopped, and I said, you know, I've finally gotten to the point in my life where I've decided it's not up to me to decide what he's going to do with the money once I give it. It's given. And I said, there are a lot of wealthy people that use money. To which she said, um, well, at least it's their own. And then I didn't understand. You know, what does that mean? Let's not get into that anymore. You just said, don't be pepperdine. No, but I wish that I'd known, I mean, you know, I'd like to think of what more, maybe there was nothing else to say to her that morning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[57:28]

It's good for us to stretch that way. But it's just good to grapple with the discomfort. Not just with him, but with her. It's just... It's a stage we have to... It feels like we have to go through. Because there's a better place than just giving money on the street. I don't know what that is yet. Will I invite someone into my home? Will I take them home and feed them? I don't know. Well, I want to say this. And I just, Susan reminds me of what I'm going to do. And at the risk of talking too much, it's easy. I'm going to do it anyway. I have been a foster parent, and I sent money. It used to be foster parents plan, now it's Plan International. I sent money, and I've had a whole series of sons. They get to be 18, and they sort of graduate from being my son, and then I get another one. Now I have a daughter.

[58:32]

But Sri Lanka is a long ways away. And there is sort of a rigid bureaucracy to this. And I really find it very difficult writing these letters. And I've written, I don't know, 50 or 60 of them. I have them in the computer, and I'm now to the point where, you know, I edit the old ones and find out more. And so, I decided that in January of 1993, I'm going to graduate from Plan International, and I'm going to give the money that I was giving to this Buddhist Children Alliance in Sri Lanka to the Reverend Mrs. Jones in Emeryville, who has a church down here that helps people much closer are a lot needier than the children in Sri Lanka, Hawaii and Galilee. And have more contact. Yes. I go with Rondi every Wednesday and part of daily bread.

[59:41]

She's one of the drop-off places. She operates this church out of her home. She's been doing it for 30 years. Well, that's a nice plan. We can all... But I want to be more direct, is what I'm saying, rather than giving money to fill in the blank. Now, it's high time to move on to Sheila, but there are some people who haven't said anything. And would anybody who's been quiet so far like to say something about Donna before we proceed along? And at a moment's notice, it can happen.

[62:31]

It can happen without... That's it. That's a nice peek at possibility, as you say. You suddenly see a lot of possibility. Anybody else who hasn't said that? So this discussion about the shame that we feel in the presence of the homeless, connected within me, is the sort of shame that I feel when confronted with somebody else's psychic pain or emotional pain or distress, as well as their material pain or deprivation. And to me, it seems to come back to a feeling that that deprivation or distress is unbearable, which has to do with the way that I relate to my own suffering, that there's some assumption that it can't be tolerated, that it can't be accepted, that it's unbearable and unworkable.

[63:38]

And to me, that connects with the shame in the presence of others. Actually, I feel that as fear, often. fear that it will just rise up and swallow everything. Right. Yeah. How does the approach of giving to a homeless person, and then you have six more, and ten more, you know, and you walk on telegrams just one after the other. Well, you know, we could all just do a little experiment a little bit with this situation which is right in front of all of us and just come up with our answers for ourselves. Well, it's like I have to put up a wall.

[64:42]

You have to set your boundaries. Your boundaries have to be there, unless you're going to be a saint. Well, Bill's got a form. I asked him that question one time. He says, well, what I do is I have a bunch of quarters at home, and I grab a handful, and I put it in my pocket. And I walk down the street, and I give everybody that asks for money one quarter. And when they're gone, they're gone. That's it. And that way, telling that story, and I tried it, and it works. And to me, the moral of that story is that you need a form. You need more than an idea. You need a mechanism, a structure to support your intention. I mean, it's sort of like sausage. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. What carries us through confusion? The form.

[65:43]

Sure. The posture, the form, whatever it is. Yeah. All right, I would like, unless somebody else has something to say. I gave him my money for him, and I started to think why this special home that I gave him my poor money for him.

[66:51]

It's like I have a kind of responsibility. And it's very strange, but I'd like him, he continues, he is homeless, he has certainly less than me, but he has something, some kind of enjoyment, which makes him different. And I try to give money for him, because I'd like to present Well, that sounds a little bit like the giving of dharma, the giving of dharma joy. But you see that in him, even though his situation is difficult, and it arouses your joy.

[67:57]

He stayed in the telegraph near the Chinese restaurant. Another little advertisement. Okay, I'd like to do a brief introduction to our next Paramita, so that we can be thinking about a report to make next week. which is Sheila. Now it's interesting, I've always heard that Sheila is disciplined and it's not. The Sanskrit word Sheila means peaceful and cool. And when Sulak Sulok is a Tibetan teacher who's very politically involved and he was around for a while. I'm sorry, a Thai.

[69:28]

A Siamese. They don't even, they don't say Thai. A Siamese teacher and he was, he stayed here with Al and his family for a bit. When Sulok was talking about the Paramitas, he said that Sila means being natural. And that if you are really practicing dana in the sense of the deep understanding that everything is a gift, that we receive and we give and it's just a kind of unbroken cycle of giving and receiving, the little peak that Ross had and the possibility, you know, that window. If we're really living that way, then we are in fact living in the natural order of mind or the peaceful and cool state. And, you know, in our meal chant we say, innumerable labors brought us this food. Let us consider whether our virtue and practice desire it.

[70:32]

deserve it. Desiring the natural order of mind. Let us be free from greed, hate and delusion. So, Sheila is then this natural order of mind. Now, it's interesting that we think of it also as discipline. And when I began to try to put discipline and natural order of mind together, I got the Japanese saying that if you want to see the true nature of a snake, you put it in a bamboo pole. And that seems to combine the two ideas. that if we really want to be free with who we are, we have to exercise enormous discipline, that our freedom lies in our ability to discipline ourselves.

[71:36]

The Diamond Sutra, the handout that I gave you, which didn't have that supplied, the page, didn't have, the practice, it calls, Shila Paramita, the practice of selfless kindness. It's more or less about a continual giving of free gifts. It really goes back to Donna. And now, thinking of Agnes' story as a humble little example on page 92, Subuddhi inquired of the Lord Buddha, what do the words Bodhisattva, Mahasattva, do not look upon their blessing and merit as private possession mean?"

[72:51]

The Lord Buddha replied, "...as those blessing and merit have never been sought in any covetous spirit by Bodhisattva Mahasattvas, so by that same spirit they do not look upon them as a private possession, but as the common possession of all animate beings." Well, that's not enormously clear. That's kind of like no gaining idea. No gaining idea, no expectation. So Agnes was just pleasant for a year to this person and forgot about, she just forgot about the difficulty. There was no gaining idea. She wasn't expecting to fix this. That's right, that's right. Yeah. So that's the natural order of mind. The naturalness is the kind of the larger quality of Sheila.

[73:53]

And then the more effort side of Sheila, of course, is the 10 precepts or the 16 precepts. And it's interesting that I don't see any literature in the Heart Sutra, the large Prajnaparamita Sutra that talks about the precepts. It is in the Diamond Sutra. It is? At least it's in Thich Nhat Hanh's version, I think. Did he make it up, or do you think he really got it out of the Diamond Sutra? I can't remember now, because I've read it in a bunch of places, but I'll look again. Yeah, there was one paragraph that listed them and I was really amazed at how similar the wording was to the wording that we use. And then, of course, it's very nice when we take the precepts and the bodhisattva ceremony.

[74:54]

Maybe we could all... I'm sorry I didn't bring in that bodhisattva ceremony. Because we take the precepts and then the doshi reads a few lines on each precept which have been taken from Dogen. So we get the rule itself and then Dogen's enormous enlargement of it. which gives both aspects of the precepts. It's very nice. So on the one hand, the precepts are rules that we need because we all know how unreliable we are. and slithering around in the ground that we slither, if somehow one has the form, getting back to Charlie's idea of form, if we have the form of those ten precepts, and as we are engaging in gossip, something reminds us about right speech, somewhere, then we can

[76:11]

pull ourselves back into shape. So little by little with the use of the precepts and our intentions we grind the ego, we polish the ego. grind it into, take the rough edges off, until, and I'm sure, you know, it happens to us just as we mature, that the very gross things that we said earlier in life just don't come to us so much. It's true. They don't leap to my level. Obviously, they used to. Right, right. Well, we've been punished. You realize that particularly when you're around teenagers a lot. Yes. And little by little we do come to our own natural order of mind, we really do. And then of course we have all had, we have learned the difference between a person who has had

[77:17]

an enormous enlightening experience, or perhaps several, and an enlightened person. You know, we can have, it's not terribly uncommon for people to have a big kind of zowie, wow, boom experience. But that does not necessarily mean that they are freed from despects for the rest of their lives. Our characterological development is just work. It's just work. Some insight and a lot of work. That is a very big idea. I just thought that. You can have an experience where you get how things are, but it doesn't mean that you get to do it right from then on. That's what, you know, One of those Zen masters said something like, you may get it, but then it takes 40 more years of practice.

[78:22]

Yeah. That's right. There's that story about somebody asked a Zen master, how do you live your life? And he says, do good and avoid evil. And he says, well, a four-year-old child knows that. And the response is, you know, an old person can't do it. Even a great teacher finds it difficult. So simple, do good, avoid evil. So the practice of precepts is really how we live our lives and the integration of our wisdom. And the precepts also draw us together in our Sangha.

[79:26]

They're the kind of... the fabric, in a certain way, of the Sangha, because we all are committed to them, and they're important. You know, we take them in the lay ordination, the priest's ordination, once a month in the Bodhisattva ceremony. We take them over and over and over again, together. Weddings and funerals? That's right. That's right. Last couple of summers ago I visited a Thai Buddhist monastery in England and of course those Thai monks live very They're Theravadans and they live very austere lives. Don't eat after noon, after 12, cannot take, they have to have all their food given to them, they can't take any. And they have, I don't know how many rules it is, the women have maybe 350 and the men have 227 or something. And once a month, they get together, the women and the men separately, and they take all those precepts together.

[80:37]

And those occasions, they say, are really the kind of heart grounding of their life together. They take them together and they also confess to each other which ones they've broken, and it's a very strong and intimate exchange. We see these guys going out in the morning down here. Just right next door. They're going out there. I don't know where they go, but... To get cigarettes. They're doing it. You mean they're going to get... I don't know where they're going, but... They're going to the bank. They're going to the bank. They're going to take cigarettes. Well, it's time to stop.

[82:50]

So, I hope that in this next week you will have some experience of some aspect of Sheila. I don't think we're going to talk about the precepts numerically in great detail, but perhaps we can represent them.

[83:16]

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