Well, I brought you a couple of newspaper things this week that attracted my attention. The first is Mr. Boffo. I don't know if you saw this this last week, but I found it kind of amusing and somehow it kind of seemed to apply to me. To what do you mean? To apply to me, sort of, or I could relate to it somehow, you know. The first picture is there's all these, well, it's this galley ship, right, and they're all, but they're rowing with their oars, and there's this big guy in the background who's got these sort of horns on and, and standing back there, and this one guy who's rowing, he says, you can moan, complain, and gripe all you want, or you can make up your mind like I did. And the second caption says, to be the best darned slave they ever whipped. Do you know that story about the galley ship? There's a joke about the galley ship where,

[01:08]

you know, they're all rowing, and the mate comes out on deck, and there's somebody on a drum, you know, so they can keep rowing, and then while they keep rowing, the mate comes out on deck, and he has an announcement to make. So he says, all right, listen up, everyone. I got some good news, and I got some bad news. I'm going to give you the good news first. And they have to keep rowing, you know, so they're rowing away, and the drum's going, dun, dun, dun, dun. And he says, all right, and the good news is, first of all, the captain has ordered you each get an extra flagging of rum tonight. And they cheer. And then secondly, you get an extra portion of food. All right, yay. And then he says, and tonight, you get an extra hour of sleep. All right, yeah. Okay, now the bad news. Tomorrow, the captain wants to go water skiing. Okay, so much for that.

[02:24]

Then the other article that I was interested in this week, you know, I told you, I was telling you in the instruction that you don't always know what's good and what's bad. Like, you know, this is good meditation. This is bad meditation. Tonight, I did good. You know, I'll have to do better next time, whatever, you know, that you might do in assessing your meditation. Meditation should be a time you can stop assessing, right? Or if you assess, you kind of just, you can note assessing or judging. But anyway, it's basically kind of irrelevant how well you're doing in meditation. And there's a sort of story that the Chinese have about this, which is as far as about good and bad, you know, there's this farmer and he has this one horse, which is very valuable, you know, which they can, they don't use it for working the fields. They have an ox for that. So, you know, it's a horse that they can like ride into town to get supplies or something. So it's very precious to the farmer. And one day the horse

[03:27]

disappears and they can't find it. And his neighbors kind of come by and say, well, gee, that's too bad your horses run off. And he says, we'll see. So a few days later, the horse comes back leading a whole herd of wild horses back with him. So now the farmer's got this whole, you know, herd of horses and the neighbors come by and they say, gee, that's really fortunate. How great. Wonderful. That's fabulous. The farmer goes, yeah, well, we'll see. And then his son goes out riding and he's thrown off the horse and breaks his leg. And it's really bad. And even when he recovers, one leg is an inch shorter than the other. And so he's severely damaged. And the neighbors are going, gee, how unfortunate that your son was thrown from the horse like that. That's all that's terrible. He's in such great pain and now he can't help you work around the farm the way he used to. And the farmer says, yeah, well, we'll see. So then a

[04:31]

while later, the government comes through conscripting the young men for war and they take one look at him and he's one leg an inch shorter than the other. And they say, you can't come. And so he says, gee, that's really fortunate, isn't it? Anyway, the story goes on and on like this. But you get the idea. So here's another example of that. This is actor Stacy Keach. It says under the photo here of him raising his thumb. Actor Stacy Keach was trapped in a cocaine habit. And the headline says Keach thankful for a rest that changed his life. The British customs inspector Heathrow smelled a rat sifting through the high priced luggage. He found two identical shaving cream canisters. Oh, well, now, you know, each with a false bottom. Well, each was filled

[05:36]

with three thousand dollars worth of cocaine. I honestly believe I wanted to get caught, says Stacy Keach, remembering the horrific nightmare of a 250 dollar a day habit that landed the actor in London's Reading jail for six months in 1984, the same year he hit it big with the CBS series My Camera. My career was everything back then, and though I was married, I wasn't devoted, had no family values, and I couldn't accept the success. I felt I didn't deserve it. I wanted to be an Olivier, a stage actor, not a TV star, someone who sold out, who became a prostitute. The only comfort came from cocaine, says Keach, 49 now. I was a continual user trapped, convinced I couldn't survive without it, etc., etc. Cocaine was putting me under such a state of numbness that I became disillusioned by everything. It took a trauma to change it around. It was a double whammy, two

[06:37]

simultaneous feelings, absolute panic and humiliation of being caught at the airport, and then total relief. I was fed up with using. The loneliness was agonizing, and I told myself, you've wrecked your life. That's something in, uh, Kenneth Petchen, it's one of his lines. No, it was, uh, is it Mose Allison? It's Mose Allison who says, uh, what do you do after you ruin your life? It's one of his songs. I was filled with self-loathing. I had no self-esteem until I became the jail librarian. I helped the inmates who were illiterate by reading their letters to them. That helped tremendously. He smiles. I'm another person today, so different. First of all, I've never used cocaine again, never even been tempted to go near it in a low moment. I'm lucky. Second, my top priority is my new family.

[07:41]

Uh, which is Polish-born actress Malgosia Tomasi and two-year-old son Shannon. One of his most recent accomplishments was a critically hailed stint as Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. Does he still feel unworthy of his success? Not at all, he says. Spiritual values have come into my life in a very real way. Religion, going to church, praying, surrendering to a higher power. I like myself a lot better now because I'm a survivor, because I have gratitude in my life. So another example of, um, what's bad might be good, and what's good might be bad. But it's, um, it's pretty clear and pretty obvious in meditation, and you, uh, over,

[08:56]

especially over time, you notice that probably the more valuable experiences are the ones that, uh, were the most difficult to, uh, to be, to bear with, or to bear, or to, endure. Um, rather than the experiences that you might tend to think are valuable, where, um, suddenly everything falls into place, and, uh, uh, you experience, uh, white light or whatever, um, you know, your body is light or you feel, uh, a great love or, uh, various things, you know, you might have a wonderful experience, uh, now and again in meditating. But it's kind of like if you have one of those wonderful experiences, uh, it's, it's not as though you need to do anything then.

[09:58]

I mean, anybody can, anybody can, it's a little bit like a friend of mine, when he was growing up, he was a bit of a juvenile delinquent, and he lived in an apartment building, and one of his neighbors was an ex-Golden Gobs boxer, or a heavyweight, you know, had been a heavyweight boxer, and, uh, one day this guy invited him into his apartment, they were kind of friends, and one day the, the guy said to him, you know, it's, uh, it's easy to be bad, but not, uh, you know, anybody can be bad, but to be good is, is difficult, is harder to do, and somehow that, you know, struck him, and, uh, he decided that he wasn't going to just be anybody, who could, anybody can do bad, but, you know, I'm making the opposite point, anybody can have a wonderful experience in meditation. Uh, and it's not like, um, if you, if you happen to get, you know, struck with, um,

[11:14]

a wonderful experience now and again, well, it sort of takes care of itself, in other words. Uh, but the experiences that are more difficult, uh, are actually the experiences that are the experiences that, uh, in a certain sense, you know, will, will deepen your life and, and, uh, promote your growth or development, uh, as a human being. Um, the, um, the fact that, uh, over and over again, I find the most difficult to accept, uh, which I seem to think, I think every so often I've kind of accepted this fact,

[12:17]

and then I noticed that I haven't, uh, is that the nature of life is, the way that life happens is not something that I can, uh, control to anywhere near the degree that I would like to, and I, I'm not able to make it anything near the way I would wish it to be. Have you noticed this? You know, if I had my choice, it wouldn't be like this sort of thing, and so there's a certain kind of wishfulness that we have, which isn't, you know, I don't mean to say that we shouldn't wish, uh, because it's a little bit like all those kinds of things we hear of, like, uh, you know, Martin Luther King or whoever saying, you know, I have a dream,

[13:19]

sort of like I have a wish, uh, and at the same, but at the same time, uh, it's, uh, in some ways, you know, more to the point then that we're able to, uh, endure experiences that we wouldn't have chosen, chosen to have, uh, endure and, and in some sense, uh, face, and these experiences are the ones that then, you know, bring out the best in us. We tend to have some kind of habit of mind and a kind of stream of things that we tell ourself, uh, about ourself, about other people, about the world. We have a kind of,

[14:21]

tend to have a kind of dialogue or monologue going, uh, which is very reassuring. It reminds me that I'm me, and I feel comfortable as long as this kind of little gossip thing is going on in the story of my life, and how I'm doing, and whether I, you know, and how I could be doing better, and, um, uh, as a friend of mine says, another different friend of mine says, uh, you know, the big question is, what's going to happen to me? So we're always updating ourself on what is happening to me, and then what might happen to me, and how it's all going to come out, you know, uh, and where, where I might get to in the future. Uh, and to, you know, a greater or lesser extent that, um, ongoing kind of dialogue and updating

[15:30]

of that storyline, uh, actually gets in the way of our, uh, of our more deep, our more deep engagement in life, in living, in our own life, in our relationship with others, uh, how we are at work. You know, what can you say to somebody? What do you say to somebody? Uh, can you express yourself? I was talking with somebody recently who said, well, no, I, I'm not going to say that to my boss, to my, uh, parents, uh, because I'm afraid that if I went to say that, I would, uh, tend to tell them, uh, you know, I would tend to be, I would say the wrong thing to them, and they wouldn't see me in such, you know, in as good a light anymore, so I can't say anything to

[16:36]

them. So what is the reason for not saying something? I, they might see me in a, in a worse light. What would happen to me? I would be seen in a worse light. I don't want to be seen in a worse light. So consequently, I'm not going to express myself. So this is the way this works to that we, we tend then to have these various kinds of strategies, which theoretically are going to make us look good and make things come out okay for me. Uh, so there'll be various experiences in meditation where you won't, uh, look particularly

[17:44]

good, and you might actually get some practice at not looking very good, and you might actually find out that it's okay that, not to look good, you know, that it's all right not to do well, and that actually, you're only able to survive that by not, no longer thinking in those kind of terms, and actually to be in the experience, you have to stop keeping up that dialogue with yourself, or that monologue, and that kind of updating of the storyline, how you're doing, and the only way to be in the experience that you're in is to, in that sense, plunge into it, uh, and experience it. So this is, again, so this is also similar to a story I use a lot of Suzuki Roshi, who, Suzuki Roshi's father was a Zen teacher. I don't know if you know, but Suzuki Roshi

[18:55]

was my teacher, okay, so, and he has a book, there's a book of his talks called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, but anyway, his father was a Zen teacher, and, but it's kind of traditional that you get your Zen training from somebody other than your father, so when he was 10, or 11, or 9, or something like that, his father sent him off to another Zen, to study with another Zen teacher, and there were four or five kids who lived with this other Zen master, and they would do some meditation, and they'd have some classes, and then they'd work around the monastery, and they'd do various things, and one of the things that they did was that when the daikon was, uh, when they picked a lot of daikon, there's a certain time of year when the daikon is ready, and then they would pickle a lot of it, and the way it's pickled is that you take a rice bran and salt, and you layer the daikon, and we did this, used to do this for a while at Tassajaro, you know, we were sort of Japanophiles, and you take a layer of rice bran and salt, and

[20:01]

then you have a layer of daikon, you know, the big white radish, and then a layer of rice bran and salt, and daikon and radish, and then the salt draws moisture out of things, right, so after a have daikon, the salt goes in, the moisture comes out, and you have daikon sitting in this kind of paste, a little bit like the consistency of miso, and the daikon is sitting in this big barrel of, of this kind of rice bran and salt, and it's, uh, kind of mushy, and you can, you can reach in and grab a pickle, and then get off all this kind of slime, it's not really slime, but you know, goop, it's kind of light brown, and then you can wash it off, and you can slice it, and so on, so one year, when they made the pickles, they didn't put enough salt in to at least, you know, one part of a barrel or something, so the pickles kind of, what happens if there's not enough salt, the pickles rot before they get salted, so these pickles were kind of a little

[21:03]

foul tasting. Well, his teacher apparently was a fairly strict kind of Zen person, and, you know, it's a little bit like that story of those two monks who were out walking one time, and they're way up in the mountains, and they're walking by this little stream, and they, and they're, they were going up to visit some person that they'd heard about, famous, you know, person living off by himself somewhere, and he's acquired a certain amount of renown, and as they're walking up the stream, they see this little cabbage leaf floating down the stream, and they say, let's not visit him. If he doesn't even care about a cabbage leaf, what's the point, you know, and then a few minutes later, this little man comes running down the stream. After the cabbage leaf, but anyway, so, so Suzuki's teacher is like the little man running down the stream after the cabbage leaf, and so he served the pickles anyway.

[22:05]

Well, many of you have children, and you know that you're not going to get children to eat these things, so the boys did not eat any of these pickles while they were served night after night, you know, at least for a couple nights, and then Suzuki had this idea, you know, he thought he would take matters into his own hands, and he got these pickles, and in the dark of night, went out to the garden and dug a hole and buried them. This is what you do with something that is distasting, distasteful, you know, you dig a hole and bury it, and of course you hope it stays there, but as many things that we dig holes and bury, the next night the pickles were on the table again, and his teacher, without, you know, bothering to, you know, confront the culprit, probably knew who'd done this, simply said that they would have to eat the pickles.

[23:12]

Before they had anything else to eat, and so Suzuki said this was the first time in his life that he did something without thinking, because if you had a single, so it was just bite and chew and chew and swallow. He said if, you know, if you'd had a single thought, you'd have to spit it out, you know, this is foul, you know, this is awful, how terrible, so if you think anything, you know, you would have, so you have to not, you know, he had to not think anything, just chew and swallow. So, you know, we'll have these kind of experiences that are not the most pleasant, and, you know, I don't know that we need to go out of our way to have them, you know, sometimes we end up, you know, sort of thinking that it's good for me to have these bad

[24:17]

experiences, and we let somebody treat us badly because it must be good for me, and, you know, so anything I, you know, when I say these kind of things, I don't mean to, you know, authorize those kind of relationships or whatever, you know, that, or that you need to, you know, that you need to in some way go out of your way to have bad experiences and get mugged, and, you know, various other things, and it'll be good for you, but just in terms of, like, your meditation practice, I think it's useful to have a fair amount of faith or confidence that just because it's difficult doesn't mean that it's, you know, not worthwhile or something to be avoided, and in fact that the difficulty is the way we learn and grow. So, I'm kind of talking

[25:19]

about, you know, a little more again about what I, you know, the same thing that I talked about last week, but it seems to be on my mind and in a little different way this week. It's fairly useful, but I think, and for me at least, meditation then has helped me with that to have enough difficulty to understand that I'm not going to be able to get through life looking good, you know, to myself and to everybody else. And it's very curious about, you know, getting through looking good because mostly everybody else already knows, you know, and then I've noticed myself, I do my best, you know, to hide it from everybody else, and then it turns out they already know,

[26:21]

and it's really embarrassing that they knew all along, and the only one I was really hiding it from was myself, you know, whatever it is. Meditation will be a place then that you can acknowledge. You'll find that you'll have to acknowledge the kind of person that you are or that you've been and that sort of thing, and you'll come to then some acceptance or forgiveness, and you'll also be able to see your so-called pure intention. There's a, it's not always, you know, so clear to us what our intention is, and it's not,

[27:23]

it's even, you know, it may be even less clear to other people what our intention is, but there'll be a great value in clarifying your intention, whether it's while you're sitting or if you wonder whether or not to say something to somebody, you can check what your intention is. So, it's one kind of intention to, for instance, to want to win the argument or want to make sure that somebody else understands what a bad person they are. And it's another kind of intention to resolve the argument or to express yourself without, and at the same time though, letting go of whether or not your expression is

[28:24]

received and responded to just the way that you'd like, but that you want anyway to express yourself. Does this make sense? So, there's various intentions that you might have in speaking up or speaking to someone. And oftentimes, you know, for instance, then if you give somebody else the opportunity to, you know, if you ask somebody else how things are going for them and what's happening with them, somebody else may actually tell you, and without you having to tell them, they'll tell you what their problem is and what their difficulty is. Without your having to, but whereas if you told them, you know, you know what your problem is.

[29:28]

If you tell the person that, then the person is defensive. Who are you to tell me? You know, you're not any better than I am. And probably what we're doing in meditation then is creating, learning how to create the kind of space where somebody can tell us various things, either about themselves or about ourself. It's a space where we can hear, you know, various points of view, various sides of things. The Kuan Yin here is the Bodhisattva that is said to have eyes in her hands and also she hears the cries of all beings, the cries and the whispers. But we're each that kind of, you know, person in meditation. We create that kind of space that can hear the voices of all beings.

[30:31]

And the quiet voices and the disturbed voices and the painful voices that much of the time will be too busy to hear. We'll be working, we'll be doing things and we won't hear. And we'll probably be so busy and doing things so much because it is as painful as it is to hear those voices. So, I'm not sure, you know, I don't mean to say, I'm not sure that you have this kind of experience in meditation, you know, but if you do and if this is relevant, then, you know, I want you to know that it's not so unusual. In fact, it's pretty common. And again, then, I don't mean to say that if you're not having this kind of experience, then you're meditating in the wrong way. Meditation isn't so good. So, in another kind of sense, you know,

[31:51]

meditation practice or spiritual practice is about being your own best friend or being your own teacher. And you have to teach yourself how to meditate, teach yourself how to be compassionate and talk to yourself about it and explain to yourself how you could accept yourself. The part of you that doesn't accept yourself, you explain to that part of you. You have to, that's your student, that's your teacher. We know how it is that a parent, of course, wants the best for you, but then the parent may be overprotective. Basic intention of the parent is maybe a good intention. So again, if you notice the intention, you might, you know, if you notice the intention of your own parental voice

[33:00]

that tells you, oh, you don't say that, you'll get into trouble if you say that. And the intention is to save you some trouble. But you can also talk back to the voice and, you know, that kind of parental advice that you give yourself and say, you know, I know, I appreciate your intention, you know, for me not to get in trouble, but as it is, I never get to express myself because I'm being so careful not to have any trouble. And I need to practice a bit expressing myself and having a little trouble, you know, and after I do this, I'll check back with you on how it's, you know, what happened. So in meditation, you have some kind of little, you know, elementary kind of practice with this of hearing the voices and, you know, if some teaching is needed or some response, you know, you can respond to the thoughts too. But, you know, some thoughts you'll have to sit with

[34:04]

for some time and other thoughts, you know, will come and go more readily. On the whole, I think that thoughts are rather slow to change, but that you know, we're not so quick to agree with our thoughts. As you know, you develop some, begin to develop that kind of space where thoughts can come and go and it's not like right away we say, oh yes, you're right. Of course, you know, when you hear a thought that says, oh, you better not say that because you'll, you know, you might have to get into trouble, then you don't say, oh yeah, that's right, okay, I won't say anything. You know, after a while, you're more used to that voice and it doesn't mean that you identify

[35:08]

it with it right away and you understand that there are so many other voices too. And there's also a part of you that needs to practice expressing yourself and trying out how to say things. And so, one way to do that is to examine what your intention is and when you're clear about what your intention is, you can try expressing that. Sometimes you might even want to say it, you know, I'm not trying to win this argument, I'd like to resolve this argument. I'm not trying to say that you should do what I want, but I want to let you know what I want anyway, and I'll leave the choice up to you what you do with that. So, I've kind of mixed a few things together here, a little bit of

[36:18]

meditation and Zen and, you know, psychology and so on, but perhaps you have a little sense of how meditation might be, you know, useful for you in this kind of, in this regard. And how it is that a painful or difficult kind of experience in meditation may be useful for you. So, finding out how to have, that it's quite possible to have, you know, to get into trouble. It's all right to get into trouble. You get into it without even having to say something to anybody else. You get into it just trying to sit still.

[37:21]

Let me see what time it is. Oh, it's just about nine. I was going to say if we had more time, you know, if you had any questions and so on, you can talk some more. But I kind of try to stop pretty close to nine, so if you come up with anything, you can live with it for the next, if you have any questions, you can live with it for another week or two and bring it back here and see what's happened to it over the course of a week or two. All right, thank you. Thank you. Uh, someone asked earlier, was that you about talking about?

[38:35]

I can't remember your name. Suzanne. Suzanne asked earlier if I would talk sometime about Kuan Yin, so it's close enough to a kind of Christmas theme that I'd talk about her. This is the, the statue here is the same figure, I mean, you know, it's a different representation, but it's also a, uh, the same Bodhisattva Kuan Yin, or Kanan. Originally, the, uh, earlier Buddhism, there was a Bodhisattva named Avalokiteshvara, uh, who was the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and, uh, these are figures, I'm not sure if this is

[39:36]

from China or, this one I think is, looks more to me Japanese, maybe Korean, this one I'm not sure, I think maybe Chinese, I think probably this one is Chinese. So each culture has given it, um, somewhat, you know, cultural kind of shaping, so that it's aesthetically pleasing within that culture. Loosely speaking, people refer to this figure as the Goddess of Mercy, or the Bodhisattva of Mercy. Um, and I don't know really, um, it's one of the things I, I'll have to study up, study a bit more, but I'm not

[40:41]

real familiar with, um, you know, particular details of, um, iconography or, um, you know, historical kinds of, uh, reasons why it's, why she's represented in various ways. Uh, but as you can see from the fact that I bring this statue in picture here, I have a, um, fondness, uh, for Kannon or Kuan Yin. Uh, so she's a representation of quality of compassion. And perhaps that is a bit like mercy or, uh, forgiveness.

[41:47]

Uh, and perhaps somewhat, uh, analogous to a kind of all-loving kind of figure or a, a kind of mother figure. Although, it's not exactly like a mother. It's not exactly like Virgin Mary or something like that in terms of the, I mean, she's not shown with a child or anything. Um, oftentimes the figure has a, this whole figure here, she's seated and she has one knee up and the other knee, the other leg is crossed. And so then she can have one arm out. So she's kind of at ease. It's a kind of relaxed posture. And oftentimes the figures are standing, such as this, and then she carries either, this is a, a ball, which generally has a kind of sense of the wholeness or completeness of things.

[43:00]

Uh, often she carries a, a kind of a jar with a life-giving water or vase. It's actually usually in a kind of a vase shape, those kind of vases that are larger at the bottom and then have a kind of neck to them. Uh, so she carries that to refresh beings. The quality of, um, compassion is, um, obviously quite important. And I talked a while back about both the, to some extent about compassion and wisdom as two of the basic kinds of qualities in Buddhism. Uh, and as much as anything, you know, this should be understood that, uh, the basic nature of

[44:09]

the universe, so to speak, or consciousness, perhaps more specifically, the nature of consciousness is itself already compassionate, compassion. And that the, as the more basic nature, right, and that, uh, obviously in, in our lives, we look around us in our own life and the lives we see other people around us, there's often a great deal of pain or struggle or greed. In our culture we see, uh, you know, the other day I was reading something, I forget where that was, but anyway, it was something about people making lots of money, right? And that there's no such thing as having enough money. And one person was in fact quoted as saying, net worth equals self-worth. This is, you know, this is the culture we live in. And for, apparently for a lot of people, this is

[45:17]

true. And so you never can get enough and the amount that you get is always then, you know, but then you can compare to others and then you can look down on others. And there's, you know, the few people that you have to, you know, look up to, you know, the higher you are, you know, I speak. So, um, that kind of sentiment or mind, so to speak, then is considered to be, you know, less, uh, a more superficial in that sense kind of mind. Now this is a, then a kind of twisting of compassion, you know, where the compassion then, the compassion which is naturally arising in consciousness is getting skewed in the expression of the person's life. So that the expression of the person's life is not an expression of compassion, but

[46:18]

is a kind of, you know, is then in some sense twisted and comes out in greed or uh, hatred or delusion or, and, and is, uh, expressing or spreading, uh, suffering. So this is, um, I feel an important point about Buddhism that the, this kind of, this sense of compassion which, uh, Kuan Yin represents, uh, is not something that, you know, we make up in the sense of, you know, super ego or whatever, or parental kinds of, or societal kinds of notions that say, you know, now be good. Uh, you know, uh, or mom and dad saying, you know, don't be selfish. And that somehow the quality of compassion

[47:25]

is as basic or more basic than the greed or, and that even a, and it doesn't mean, you know, I've, I've mentioned before, you know, obviously babies, any of you who have had kids or have been around kids, you know that, that babies and, and young people are not naturally compassionate exactly. But, um, at the same time, uh, there'll be some difference between a kind of, uh, helping them to see or helping a child to understand. Our children are, are also though able to understand if you explain to them, which is different than, uh, you know, just telling them to behave a certain way.

[48:27]

You know, so if you say, I'm sorry I yelled at you, you know, but I've been feeling kind of sick lately. I've had a kind of cold. I've been working very hard. Your child, even at a pretty young age can understand that. And, and we'll have some empathy, which is different than just shut up. Don't bug me. Uh, you know, go to your room. Uh, you're, you're really obnoxious. And so that, that kind of, you know, um, that we kind of thing that we hear perhaps as we're growing up or, you know, even as we are growing up, um, people like to tell us, uh, you're this or you're that, which is different than explaining, uh, or helping, uh, one to understand, uh, in such a way that one's inherent compassion can in fact surface in the situation,

[49:29]

come to the surface and express itself. But the, um, for me, the other kind of, so this is one important quality to, or for me, important to understand that, that the nature of consciousness is, uh, compassionate. Uh, so in some sense, in terms of practice, we're trying to, uh, clear away, uh, the, or let go of the more twisted expressions of compassion. You know, that in one's own life,

[50:37]

one starts to, you know, uh, you know, someone, by the way, a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about anger and arguments and I meant to, I've been meaning to share, um, that person's not here tonight, but anyway, I've been meaning to explore Dogen, share Dogen's advice about arguments, which was, you know, don't try to win the argument, but at the same time, this doesn't mean to give up your own point of view. You know, it's just kind of similar to what I was saying that night of, you know, if you're trying to resolve the argument, it's different than if your intention is to win the argument. So the quality of compassion is more this quality of, you know, that we, we have that in ourselves and it's a matter of, it's more a matter of knowing, noticing it rather than just, I mean, Buddhism this way feels to me less, in that sense, less like a kind of, you know, uh, rule, uh, rules of behavior,

[51:43]

you know, do this and don't do that and behave this way. And, and in that kind of context, uh, I have some tendency to feel like, you know, who are you to tell me what to do? Or would you please stop bossing me around or, you know, something like this. And I, I'm already telling myself enough things, right? That if somebody else starts telling me all these things, I get, I can get kind of frustrated and, and, and put off. Um, uh, but what, anyway, I'm trying, what I'm trying to get to here, uh, in a roundabout way is to say that the, the quality of compassion is, is rather different than the, the way we use the approach our life, which is somehow that, you know, we can only accept a certain kind of behavior on our part. And, and then if, if we're not the kind of person we think we should be, we're withholding

[52:49]

a kind of warmth for ourself or a kind of love for ourself or respect and appreciation just for our own being. And the quality of compassion is more like more, is more, is larger than that, right? And it's not, it's more unconditional then. It's not based on the condition that you behave a certain way, then I'll have compassion or then I'll have love or then I, then I could respect you. Quality of compassion is more unconditional than that. There's an acceptance and a, a kind of respect or gratitude, appreciation that is different, that is not dependent on the behavior. And so for that reason, then the Kuan Yin or Kan Ze On, as they sometimes say in Japanese, Kuan Yin, Kan Ze On, Kan On, the Bodhisattva is there for anybody at any time then, under any kind of circumstances. If one is to, it's said then,

[53:55]

if one is to open one's heart to Avalokiteshvara to Kuan Yin, then, you know, the Bodhisattva will be there. Then you have some chance to feel the feeling, you know, appreciation or love for somebody who's, who from other points of view is not worth it, right? And so usually we're setting out in our life and I certainly have approached Buddhism often as, you know, I am going to make myself worthy of love, worthy of respect. And this is again a kind of, you know, certainly the sense that this isn't, it's not like this is absent in Buddhism, but Buddhism is a little different this way, which is, and Hinduism and Christianity and I think other religions generally are more like, you know, you make yourself, you purify yourself to make yourself worthy of either God's

[54:57]

love or cosmic consciousness or supreme being and, but certainly the other element is also there in Christianity that if you just ask, you can receive forgiveness or you can receive Jesus or however that it's expressed. And you don't, you know, on one hand there's the idea that you have to earn it, but on the other hand, of course, God can't be bought. This would be, this would be very strange if God could be bought, you know, through your good behavior. You know, it can't, so it can't quite depend on your good behavior, the quality of mercy or compassion. And so, Kwan Yin is the same way. So even, you know, a terrible person could receive this kind of mercy or compassion or warmth, some tenderness, which does not

[55:59]

depend on the fact that, yes, you finally measured up to the standards that, you know, have been long established for you. So this is quite a wonderful and important kind of quality then, that I had this kind of, you know, experience yesterday, actually. And I had a number of checks that I'd gotten from photographs and some of them were from the, I did a craft fair, so a lot of them are, most of them are people I don't know. And only a few of them are checks that, from people that I might know. I had 10 or 12 checks about $400 worth of checks and I had them in a little envelope. And then I went away for the weekend. And I came back and I'd forgotten that they were in the envelope. And I think the envelope said something like UNICEF on the outside. And so I think I just tossed it with all the rest of my

[57:01]

junk mail. Because it wasn't until last night that I realized that I'd put the checks in an envelope and that really, before I tossed anything out, I ought to be looking in all the envelopes. And the garbage had gone out Tuesday morning. So everything I tossed out Sunday night and Monday, I couldn't go back. So I felt so awful. And at that time, well, you know, one has this tendency to go like, it's sort of like, how could you? You know, what's wrong with you? You really are such a dysfunctional person, aren't you? Yes, I hate doing this. I hate having to keep track of things. You're right. You know, I can't stand it. So it was kind of a, you know, an oscillation, you know, between

[58:02]

kind of sorrow, grief, disgust, distaste, anger, fear, loathing, you know, kind of whole range of emotions and physical sensations. And I was having trouble sort of breathing, you know, I was kind of, stomach was kind of hurting. Patty was saying, I'm sure they'll turn up. I said, you know what, no. And then I hadn't quite realized at that point, you know, that they probably weren't going to turn up. And I said, you know, yeah, they're probably going to turn up, but, you know, I'm, you know, it's still a concern. And then a little while later, I realized what had probably happened and why I was unable to find the item in question. So if any of you notice this place in your checkbooks where, you know, you don't get the check back. I called up two or three people finally this morning.

[59:10]

So, but at one point, Patty did say to me, you know, do you have to be so hard on yourself, you know, about this? Could you, would you please, you know, not be so hard on yourself? It's not, there's no reason to be so hard on yourself about it. But it's hard, you know, when you're right in the midst of it to not, to not be hard on yourself. But at some point, the compassion begins to seep in and the quality of accepting, you know, this kind of event, you know, being able to accept and being able to breathe again and feel some warmth. So it's, it's an interesting thing because apparently, you know, from what there's also,

[60:31]

the Tibetan figure is known as Tara. So Tara is also a representation of the same kind of aspect of compassion. There are various Tara figures. I have, I wonder if I brought that in with me. No, I guess not. Sometime I'll bring in one of my Tara figures. But I've read, John Boatfield has a book of about the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and there's several stories about Tara. And it's interesting because, you know, it's not quite as simple as, as you might suspect of, you know, sometimes people have that kind of complaint about Catholicism and confession. You can do what you want as long as you go and confess it, and then it's forgiven and, you know, pay off your debt. And so some people criticize Catholicism as kind of,

[61:32]

you know, being a license to, you know, misbehave because of that. And the fact that the, you know, the Catholic Church allows mafia dons to come and confess and so forth or whatever. But, you know, it doesn't, and it doesn't quite work like that either with, you know, our friend here. There were some stories in there of Tara when, you know, some young man, you know, promised, you know, if you just get me out of this situation, you know, I'll, I will be forever grateful. And then a while later, he's back to misbehaving again, and she trips him up. Then she, I forget exactly how she went about tripping him up, but then she comes to him and she says, you know, you promised. But you can certainly see in this, I think in this face particularly, and when I sometimes have,

[62:46]

especially when it's somehow when she's in this kind of relaxation pose, you get this sense of, you know, don't you have somebody who has seen it all, so to speak? Somebody who has seen it all, and yet there is some, a kind of warmth or, you know, bemusement. And it's almost as though, you know, there's this kind of warmth for, in Buddhism, it's taught that there is not really a self, right? So it's a kind of compassion. She has a kind of bemusement for all these beings who get all wrapped up in thinking that they are somebody, that they have these particular problems. And so she has this little kind of smile about that. It reminds me a bit of a joke that I first heard from Stephen Levine, I think, and, you know,

[63:48]

I've kind of translated it into a kind of Zen context rather than a Jewish context that started out in, you know, where there's this Zen master and he has an attendant who accompanies him. And so one day the Zen master comes into the hall and he's, and while he's in there, there's also some new student who's in the back of the room and he's sweeping and cleaning the meditation hall. So then the Zen teacher comes in and he's bowing at the altar. And while he's bowing at the altar, he's saying, I am nobody. I am nobody. I am nobody. And I am just your humble servant or something. And so then he finishes up and he leaves with his attendant. And for some reason, a few minutes later, they happen to come by again. And this new student who has been cleaning the hall is bowing in front of the altar going, I am nobody. I am nobody. I am nobody. And the master turns to his attendant and says, look who thinks he's nobody. So that's about the same as

[65:01]

thinking you're somebody from a Buddhist point of view. So part of the compassion is, involves then this kind of aspect of, you know, there's a certain kind of wisdom there of recognizing the kind of limitation of those kind of descriptions of who we are and that they're not in some way, you know, finally binding or, you know, that we don't need to be forever caught. And Avalokiteshvara with that, can see that and can accept us, even though we have those kinds of tendencies to get caught up in our description of who we are and the kinds of suffering that we have. And at that time, you know, be a kind of a companion. So that's also our own,

[66:01]

you know, consciousness, as I was saying earlier, that is able to do that. And that at times we actually experience that kind of, and recognize that our description is, of who we are is not the kind of joke like, look who thinks he's nobody. And obviously too, there's this kind of, you know, it's a kind of tireless kind of activity. Because as human beings, we're forever forgetting or in some sense, overlooking our basic kind of compassion, our basic compassionate nature and getting involved

[67:07]

in various other kinds of fiascos, whether it's self-worth is net worth or whatever it happens to be. The kind of state of mind that we wanted or the kind of success in our life or relationships or whatever, as being in some way, you know, the way to measure or evaluate ourself. And we have this great tendency to get involved in, you know, what's going to happen to me and so on, and how well or how poorly we've done. Suzuki Roshi used to say, which helped me a lot, you know, we just finished the time, one of the times I remember is we'd finished a week of meditation. So you might feel even, you know, just in one sitting here, oh I did pretty well,

[68:12]

I didn't do so well, I wasn't so calm, I wish I could have been more calm, this or that, one thing or another, some kind of evaluation of how was your sitting, how did it go tonight. And so even more so perhaps in a week of meditation. And certainly in a week of meditation, it's about the same as, you know, self-worth is net worth, because you can look around and put yourself on the ladder of ten students, who sat the stillest, who could sit the longest. And at least on that ladder, you know, I was pretty far down. So I wasn't feeling any too, you know, happy with myself. And in his talk after the end of Sashin, he said that, you know, it's one thing to be practicing, so to speak, and it's another thing when we stop and evaluate, whether we think we are doing well or we don't

[69:20]

think we're doing so well, we're still stopping to evaluate rather than, just as he would say, expressing our true nature. And he said, you know, some of you did very well and you can be, and you can certainly be proud of yourselves, but, you know, now you have to do something else. That's over. And some of you, you didn't do so well, and you may, you may feel unhappy with yourself, but now you have to do something else. And he said, you know, so we have this kind of, you know, reminder, that's another way of saying, a kind of, you know, that's a kind of from, that's both wisdom and compassion, to recognize that there's a limited, and we always know that, that there's a kind of,

[70:22]

all of the evaluations we make of ourself have a kind of limited, you know, time limit. It's always, what have you done for me lately? You know, whether you're in the restaurant business or you're just in the business of life, you know, so all the evaluations are only for, you know, this moment, and then there's a new evaluation and a new evaluation, and so we can see, even from that point of view, that how real could the evaluation be if it has such a time limit on it, if you're only as good as, you know, and so, and then all the more reason, you know, like, well, you might be, you might feel good about yourself, you might feel unhappy with yourself, but now you have something else to do. So, you know, our friend here may look at you and say something like that too. Now you have something else to do. Isn't it funny how you get so involved in those ideas?

[71:26]

Some of the, in Japan, they have the Kwan Yins who have, you know, many arms. You've probably seen those statues too. She's supposed to have, in that representation, you know, a thousand arms, and then each hand has an eye in it. So this is a hand extending to help beings, and here's the cries, and here's the suffering. So it's in this, it's also in that sense like, you know, you might say like a good mother, a kind of quality of a parent, a parental mind or a kind mind. Sometimes in Japanese Buddhism, they talk about the grandparent mind, because grandparents can be more compassionate than the parents.

[72:36]

You know, grandparents will spoil the grandchildren in the way that the parents won't want to. The parents who live with them all the time are kind of getting all caught up in, oh my God, she did this, he did that. And the grandparents kind of, it's to them, it's much more, it would tend to be much more just amusing and cute or whatever. And rather than the, and it's partly that, you know, the difference in age and partly that, you know, one is not living with the person all the time, probably. But sometimes the Japanese Buddhism, they talk about this kind of quality as kind mind and or grandparent mind. And Dogen-senshi describes how, you know, even pretty tiny creatures often will take good care of their offspring. And they don't do it, you know, then for any kind of, it's just because

[73:43]

it's what they do. It's not because, they're going to support me when I get older. You know, it's not, it's not because of a payback. It's just, it's the nature of the parental mind to care for the offspring. And in the same way, then Kuan Yin has this quality of caring for beings without any particular, you know, it's not as though there's some reason for it or something that she gets back. And I, I don't know, a number of weeks ago I told that story of, there's another Abhigakeshvara. In fact, this one here, you can see she has, she has a few extra heads, you know. I guess maybe she just has this one extra head. These are some kind of other kind of ornament, I think. But there's one Abhigakeshvara that has 11 heads

[74:47]

altogether. And so the story is that one day she went to hell to save all the beings in hell. And of course, this is quite difficult. Because just like me last night, I'm quite involved in where I am in the realm of lost checks, right? And so it's hard to imagine or conceive of any other possible world. Somebody can say to me, but Ed, you know, you could just, you could just come to this other world with me, please. Why don't you come with me and we'll leave this place and we'll go to another realm where we don't have to worry about lost checks. Where people who lose checks are forgiven, and can, are still lovable people. And they're still kind, you know, and, and we can still appreciate this person as being

[75:54]

considerate and thoughtful. Who so carefully put those checks in the envelope? Usually I don't put checks in envelopes, really. So, but it's very hard at that time, you know, to convince the being that there is this other world. So when Abhigakeshvara Kuan Yin went to hell to save the beings, she obviously had a very difficult time trying to convince them that there, there is this other way to look at things. This other world, world you could live in. But she finally gets the beings together and they get to the borders of hell and they're all finally leaving. She turns around, innumerable more beings have wandered in. And so this, this in fact, you know, in our lingo, you know, we would say this blew her mind. But literally her head exploded. You know, the fact that she had gone to all this trouble and then innumerable more beings are there.

[77:02]

So the Amida Buddha, which is maybe this figure up here, you know, he gave her another head. But this had to happen 10 times before she got a head that would endure under those circumstances, that could endure that kind of, you know. But this is how this, I, I like this story because for me it, it says something about, well how do we generate compassion? And we generate compassion by not being able to stand it, you know, and coming apart. And we come apart and then we get a new head, we get a new body, we get a new mind. And we try again to generate some compassion in the situations that we're in. And then we face another situation where we come undone. So I, I know I came pretty undone last night. And so we can also trust that when we come undone like that, that Amida Buddha or someone,

[78:10]

somehow a new body appears, new mind. And the person that we knew who thought that, you know, we could, you know, I'm somebody who thought, you know, I, I would tend to think that I could become a competent being when I grew up, you know, a competent human being, you know, take care of checks and things. I thought that about myself, but you know, it doesn't necessarily seem to work that way or like that's the point, you know, to just be able to do that. I mean, somehow this other quality of being able to accept oneself or it's a deeper quality, more basic. So we're all those minds and beings, you know, and this is one of the beings or minds that we can turn to at times and be sustained and accepted, supported.

[79:11]

Sometimes in, in terms of, oh, you know, meditation, um, you, you can think about, you might think about letting the sensations come home to your heart or letting your experience come home to your heart. This is kind of the quality of, of compassion. Something that things can come home or that there's, there's a kind of home in our being. Where when you go to, when you go home, uh, there's a mind there that can receive you and accept you as you are. You know, where you're not, and you don't need to be measuring up or perfecting yourself or,

[80:16]

but there's actually a mind or being that can accept you the way you are. And so this is, you know, a quality of our own that we can develop. I mean, it's already, you know, in some sense, the nature of our consciousness, the basic fundamental nature of consciousness to be compassionate, to be this kind of receiving and accepting. And, um, you know, on the whole, then your meditation practice will tend to, uh, naturally, very naturally tend to help you develop this kind of, be aware of this kind of consciousness because you won't always be able to meditate well, right? Then what? Then it's either develop some compassion or go home and not meditate anymore.

[81:23]

So if you continue meditating, you know, you will have, you will end up failing more and more in your meditation and having more and more compassion. This is my experience anyway. Must be about getting to the end of the tape, huh? Well, it's going to click off here momentarily. Is there anything you want to talk about tonight? Christmas stories? You know, I got invited to Christmas Eve and now they want me to tell stories or, you know, give a very humorous five-minute Dharma talk. I mean, you got any, you got any, yeah, you got any Jingle Bells Dharma? You know how it is, you know, in this, our, our modern American life, it's right. I mean,

[82:30]

where are the traditions, right? What do you do on Christmas Eve? What do you do on Christmas, you know? What do you do just when you sit down to eat a meal, you know, to give some kind of acknowledgement of the situation or how, what do we do to sort of bring ourselves together in various situations? It's, you know, nobody knows anymore. You've got Jews and Christians and non-practicing Jews and Christians and Buddhists and, you know, nobody knows anymore. Like, well, what, what, what should we do to make it kind of a, a ritual or an event or something other than just hanging around and, you know, gossiping and bitching and eating and moaning and groaning and TV. I don't know if you're lucky, there's a period of meditation. Sometimes they cancel it.

[83:35]

Seems to me, you know, I recall we've had, we had some, we used to have some, my recollection, at least, you know, I spent about 10 years at Page Street. It's hard to believe. I go up there now and it just doesn't feel like calm anymore. When I go back to Tashara, it still feels like calm. But I go to Page Street and it's like, where am I? What is this place? But it's hard to believe. So it's hard to believe I lived there for 10 years. Well, about five years in the building and then five years across the street. Um, but my recollection is we used to have meditation and service and we have a little, in the service in the morning, we might have a little extra chant or something. An extra dedication. You know, all the chants, when we do chants at Zen Center, you know, after the chant is over, you do the main chant, then you have a kind of dedication. Usually one person chants the dedication. We offer the chanting of this sutra to

[84:39]

Shakyamuni Buddha and to, you know, to Avalokiteshvara and, you know, and, and, or basically the idea is that whatever you're doing, you should be turning it over to the benefit of all beings. So if you sit a period of meditation, you want to...

[84:54]

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