Bodhisattva, bodhisattva, bodhisattva, rakshama. Buddha, bhagavan, buddha, bhagavan, buddha, bhagavan, bhayama. Buddha, bhagavan, buddha, bhagavan, buddha, bhagavan, bhayama. Bodhisattva, bodhisattva, bodhisattva, Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, [...] Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Lakshamam.

[01:02]

Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, Bhagimam. Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, Buddha, Bhagavan, Bhagimam. Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Lakshama. Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Lakshama. Archimandrite Callistos has a question.

[02:11]

I appreciated very much what the Swami said about the absence of violence and compulsion in the relation between the guru and his disciple. I wanted to ask this. How far does a guru, a human guru, offer detailed advice, answers to questions that others put? And what does he do if those under his charge fail to take his advice? Will he send them away? I suppose the answer to the first part of the question is quite simple.

[03:26]

If you are asked a question, are you listening? If you are asked a question and if you feel like answering it, answer it. And proffering advice, it's one of the great and most terrible, wasteful pastimes of teachers. And when the occasion demands, the Guru may

[04:42]

offer the advice. Such a beautiful words especially in the context of the monastery and the religious community. Offer, offer the advice. When I go to the altar to offer. So even the Guru may offer the advice That's no problem. But when the other person, I don't want to say disciple, when the other person does not take the advice, If the Guru is Ahimsa, again that's a terribly important thing to remember, the Guru must be Ahimsa, must not do Ahimsa, must not try to be Ahimsa, try to do something very nice, gentle.

[06:02]

If the Guru is Ahimsa, then he may train. I forgot to mention this in the morning. Earlier, the Guru may train. Train in the sense of somebody training a camera, somebody training a microphone or a gun. You know, to train is to point towards. So the Guru may train the other person's gaze onto the advice. But this will work only if the Guru is a Himsa. And the Guru feels, probably, I didn't make it clear. My advice wasn't clear, clear enough. So I may have to train the vision of the other person onto this and If I do not want to see it, I just don't want to see it.

[07:09]

Will He send him away? That depends upon the environmental situation. He cannot send him away from his heart, but that depends entirely upon the environmental situation. For instance, I referred to the real true master, master Vilayat Khan. If this true master, perfect master did something here which he's not supposed to do in here, the mother will quite quickly bundle him away and take him to the toilet. That I think even a guru can do. Pirvalayat has a comment. May I add a few words to corroborate what Swami has just said?

[08:15]

The policy followed by the Sufi teachers to which I, the order to which I belong, It is felt that the so-called teacher is not really a teacher, but is a mentor in the sense that he accompanies the disciple on his path, that should he give him an advice, he would take away from him the opportunity of taking upon himself a decision, which is a very important part of one's unfoldment in life, and consequently The only thing that he can possibly do is to lift his consciousness or inspire him to a point where he is able to see things in a way that he was not able to see before, so that he can see it himself and take upon himself the decision of whatever he does in consequence of what he has realized.

[09:17]

As far as correcting a pupil for not obeying, of course, we want to respect human freedom completely, but if the pupil does anything that is harmful to the group, then it may be necessary to call him to attention. But at no time should the teacher ever cast his pupil out of his heart, and this does not only apply to teachers and disciples, but it applies to all human beings. Hazrat Ali Khan, my father, once said, any person whom you have ever met, even if you've exchanged a glance in a bus or whatever, has become part of your being, and consequently you are in some sense responsible for them ultimately. You carry them in your heart. In the tradition of the Sufis, they say the disciple is like a grain of sand in the heart of the moshed, the teacher, who transforms it into a pearl.

[10:30]

It means that he is really present within his consciousness all the time. Joshua Sasaki Roshi wishes to speak with Kiyokanda as translator. I have a bad habit that I cannot, my, nothing comes out unless I stand up. Because probably the act of talking is to realize the objective world.

[11:34]

Therefore my talk is not really mine. If I remain seated and talk and close my eyes, I'll be talking to myself. It is like one-sided love. Without knowing the other's response, I just keep trying to talk to myself that she loves me. Therefore, my big eyes and gazing at you, please accept that as my habit. I'd like to thank you, Swami, for giving a very stimulating and wonderful talk

[12:48]

which I think I understood through my interpreter. Because I was asked to give some response to his talk from him, I'd like to say a few words. Actually, I don't have anything to add on. I am rather adding feet to a snake. My comment would be like adding feet to a snake. I believe there is no religion in India which does not have this Ahimsa doctrine, Ahimsa, Hinduism, Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Jainism, and all of those.

[14:39]

Just to further your understanding, I'd like to add snake feet from the Buddhist point of view. But don't worry, you are not going to receive any, you are not going to obtain any snake food for yourself. In Buddhism, the word Ahimsa, when it was translated into Chinese and Japanese, in Buddhism the word Ahimsa was translated into Chinese and Japanese not as a negative form of ah, not ahimsa, but positively as the mind of compassion. Ahimsa is translated as the mind of compassion. When you come to meet a snake suddenly along the path, and when you produce a mind of fear in your mind,

[15:48]

and try to step back, then you have already committed ahimsa, committed himsa to yourself. There shouldn't be any fear in meeting a snake when one is standing. when you are standing on emptiness. Because when you produce fear in your mind against a snake, in that moment you have this relationship of subject and object, and that means you are violating your truth, your own truth, emptiness. I do not know exactly when the Ahimsa became a sort of creed, pre-Buddhistic, Brahmanic period, or pre-Brahmanic, pre-Aryan.

[16:53]

I don't know. The reason Shakyamuni Buddha emphasized the Ahimsa is because human society will not continue, will not exist without this. Furthermore, the very existence of, or very establishment of a human being is the This very establishment of a human being is to establish life or to keep life. If you say you don't have to have life, you can send me a resignation as a human being. I may commit himself for him.

[17:55]

To live? For me to live means to establish a world of life. Without recognizing the objective world, I cannot live. a person who says he is living without recognizing the objective world is indeed dead. In Buddhism, for a life to be, there needs there needs to be the subjective and the objective. And Buddhism emphasizes that this relationship between

[18:56]

The Ahimsa is the foundation for the relationship between the subjective and the objective. Unity of this subjective and objective, and what I have been talking about, the emptiness, totality, that is the manifestation. That is the manifestation of ahimsa, which Buddhists understand as the mind of compassion. Having said this, I don't think I have to speak anymore at any time. In other words, the... In other words, If I add another footnote, the subjective world is indeed your guru.

[20:01]

This glass is my master. The stone alongside the road or wild flower is my master. There is no greater teacher. than the great silence as Professor Panikkar mentioned yesterday. A person who can manifest ahimsa in such a way that the grass is manifesting ahimsa is indeed ahimsa. Anywhere, at any place, the universe is one's own lodging. Since that is the case, don't get nervous, break down, or melancholy in trying to find a lodging place.

[21:10]

Killing oneself is the most... Violence to oneself is the most severe himsa. Secondly, killing time. Thirdly, the killing of space. In order not to do this, you have to manifest your mind of compassion, ahimsa, and I believe that is the basis of all Indian religions. I believe that not only Indian religions, because great religions, all of great religions have Ahimsa as its basis. I have been seeking the answer for the common ground of all religions, and I'd like to talk about it Some other time. Thank you very much.

[22:12]

Mrs. Sarah Small has a comment. I can't. It's much, much different for me. I am non-violent, and I have been non-violent, not because of a study into meditation, but because of an acceptance of Christ who made me non-violent, and not because somebody told me that this was what I should be. The love that we seek is in Christ. And you don't want to hurt those you love, even if they hurt you. So I find a man in Jesus Christ, whom I represent, who has been everything to me, still is, very real,

[23:32]

in my life. For a time, I read the Bible to find a way. But now I know the way, and it's like a map. Going to New York, the first time I have to use the map. The next time, I know from experience. And this is the way it is with me. Sister Jose Hobday has a comment. I appreciated your gift to us in word and implication and inspiration, so thank you. And a few thoughts have come to me that I would like to share, perhaps, that are closer to the Native American tradition, and that is always precarious land because the Native American is first individually each tribe but there is two relationship of understanding.

[24:41]

Guru as light is so significant in the American Indian, the Native Indian understanding of happiness. And this in the sense that one walks and lives in several worlds of light. while one comes into the unity, a full circle of light. So the guru in truth is that spirit who will enlighten the one ready to be enlightened. So always the posture, the disposition of readiness is with the light. Then that one must be open to the light through the medicine man, through the one who comes as always healing toward happiness. And there's good medicine and bad medicine, but in that sense one who is good for the world, good for the other and good for self in terms of medicine.

[25:52]

And with the whole sense of this kind of light, the call is to receive the light for fullest happiness. to be the blessing for the other, to be the blessing by the touch in the world where your feet walk, the world is blessed and not crushed or bruised, and to be the blessing in your own world. And that guru in this sense, or light in this sense, means to always be submitting to the light. And I perhaps could use just the dance. as one way that the native tries to come to this experience of light. To dance is to be discovered within your whole being. And for the Native American there is no light if the body cannot participate. And the participation is in freedom of movement and stillness.

[26:58]

of inner movement, this kind of experience of light that can only be discovered for the individual in the dance, and that everything in the dance, from the shoulder movements to the spring in the knee, is to keep calling into the wholeness of self-experience as readiness for light. Then the dance with the community. In this sense one always dances alone in the Native dances but one dances with and toward the other to learn how to be in light with the community and how to hold light. And then in the dance that is specifically the dance of worship and prayer, one dances to understand the light of the full spirit. So there's a kind of great interweaving and for the Native American a consistent symbol of light is rainbow. And pollen. The pollen path into the sun which shimmers from white to blue to green to non-color is that kind of union that light is only ever true in the Great Spirit, but that all the forms of light are guru to us, the world.

[28:15]

With this is kind of the... all of self-mastery in that sense and self-teaching. that only if one can yield to the truth that light reveals each moment when one comes to a riverside to yield to the truth of the riverside and not begin to calculate and do violence to the riverside as to how one changes the land to suit some darkness within but how one accommodates to what is and lives in happiness and light with the reality of this experience. So I just say this to kind of offer a sort of fullness of thought there. I see similarities and you raise my mind to other issues. One other tiny thought in the area of nonviolence, and I don't think that the Native American has this same kind of understanding in that sense, but certainly wisdom and the visionary are related to the power

[29:23]

of non-death in every thought, in every word, in every expression. And that even when the Indian deems war necessary, that plenty coops, that custom of dancing so profoundly within, that your own violence is purified, dancing with your people so that the people violence is purified, dancing in prayer so that the violence of the hidden darkness is met, allows one then to go forth to meet the other in non-violence and therefore essentially there is not the arrow meant for the heart of the other, but until a native really had to retaliate almost in this sense, the greatest violence was to touch the other as a sign that one had met him in battle. And the touch was the victory, but never a death to person.

[30:26]

I should say, a lot of those who haven't met, James DeForest, co-founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship. And a resistor. And a resistor, yeah. You said, Swami, that a guru is invitational and not coercive. He is not an electric razor, but a candle. And I felt your light when you were speaking. I also have felt light from Some others of recent times. One I never met, Gandhi. Another I only stood close to one time, Martin Luther King.

[31:37]

A few others I have actually worked with or even lived with. Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk. And I've just finished living for a month not for the first time with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master and poet. Now, these gurus have in common something which is perhaps unusual in the history of religious understanding, of enlightenment, of presence. Perhaps it's not as rare as sometimes we think, but it seems that they bring into our understanding of wholeness, of being in the light, of being of the light. A visibility that lets us see through the wall that has seemed to stand between religion and politics, between the sacred and the profane.

[32:40]

We no longer see these two realms when we are near these people. We understand that to be vulnerable to reality is something that we can't be selective about. We can't breathe the unpolluted air only. We can't hear just the sound of the birds, but not hear the sound of burning flesh. And we also seem to learn that to be vulnerable is to be invited. to respond in some way, perhaps the response of silence, perhaps the response of speech, perhaps the response of passivity, perhaps the response of action. In some way we are invited to be in vital communion with the reality that we experience, whether it is the tide rising or the village burning.

[33:43]

And here we seem to get into a very dangerous and tricky kind of area because in our communion with reality, in our experience of so much seemingly unnecessary suffering, we seek to find a way of communion with that reality which affirms the light. And sometimes, it seems, in looking at the particular gurus that I mentioned, those responses are sometimes described perhaps badly with the word resistance. And so I bring this not so much a question as a statement to you to ask for your response. Have I said enough? There is no division between what one calls politics and what one calls religion. The whole house, the house is one.

[34:51]

You might call one room your study, the other your meditation room, the third one a kitchen and the fourth one a toilet. The house is one. In exactly the same way as this body is one. There is a toilet within the body. There is an airbag within the body. To some of us there is a cemetery within the body. It's one. And even When the light of your master like so and so, so and so, it doesn't matter. I don't want to mention names. Confronts a situation, a certain situation.

[36:03]

It may be oppression, it may be aggression, it may be this, it may be whatever it is. Then a certain thing takes place. It may be an advice. It may be even as Sasaki Roshi said yesterday. This. It may be. For instance, if I try to do this, you may probably do this. Now can I see that as a happening without the polarity? This is again, to come back to this original theme sir, this is again the problem of the guru or the enlightened or what have you, following somebody else's example.

[37:11]

What Gandhi did, Was? What Gandhi was? Papa Ram Das wishes to speak. Swami Venkatesananda indeed has the gift of Saraswati. The matter of ahimsa and of silence that we were confronting earlier this morning, both of these matters remind me of Cheng Tzu's statement.

[38:22]

that it's easy to keep from walking, but it's difficult to walk without touching the ground. And I think that the Roshi's translation of Ahimsa or pointing out the translation into Japanese of compassion, of compassionate emptiness, is one of the keys to walking without touching the ground. Perhaps the question that I'm most often asked by people who are sharing this journey with us concerns matters of ahimsa. in the external sense. Questions like, did Buddha kill mosquitoes?

[39:25]

As we were in a summer camp with thousands of mosquitoes. If you don't eat meat, why do you eat vegetables when the electrical research indicates that they send off a vibration indicating that they experience something when they're hurt. There's a lovely little image that helps clarify that which is logically not clarifiable of the samurai who has been chasing for two years the killer of his master. And he finally chases him to an alley and chases him up the alley.

[40:33]

And he raises his sword to kill the murderer of his master. And the murderer spits in the face of the samurai. And the samurai sheathes his sword and walks away. And the murderer rushes up to the samurai and asks, why didn't you kill me? Samurai replies, because I was angry. It's profound that the Gita, a core book of the Hindu tradition, concerns a battle.

[41:40]

Though we can all say it is the inner battle of the ego and the Atman, Still, Krishna says to Arjuna, do your dharma. Do that which you must do, but do it without attachment. The one key I found in India that's helping me with the whole matter of ahimsa is the concept of dharma, of being quiet enough in mind and open enough in heart to hear how it is. Not that I'm listening, but I'm hearing. So that my actions are in harmony. I can't look at myself as an object and say that is violent and that is not violent.

[42:46]

That is violence. That is violence, yes. The violence is the minute I lose that feeling of harmony. I think I represent many of us in expressing to Swami Venkatesananda very deep gratitude for bringing these issues so intimately and cogently to each of us. Amen.

[44:01]

the bell.

[44:33]

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